


Nulla Vit Melior Quam Bona

by Guede



Series: The Marriage of Heaven and Hell [5]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angst and Humor, Crack Treated Seriously, Jealousy, M/M, Magic, Miscommunication, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Self-Sacrifice, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 23:23:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 50,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5947246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Figo does damage control for a lot of weird situations, but usually this doesn’t include <i>his</i> life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nulla Vit Melior Quam Bona

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted in 2008.

“I’m sorry! It was his fault! I’ll get it done now!”

But Figo had already slammed the door in Zlatan’s face. The wood quivered violently, as if it were going to shiver into splinters. Dust billowed up around Zlatan, making him wrinkle his nose and then clap his sleeve over that, before slowly floating out into the room.

Zlatan still had his mouth open. He closed that, then opened it again as he lifted his hand towards the door. Then he yanked his hand back and spun around, shaking his head. “Well, fuck you, too.”

He got about three yards on that before that annoying little twinge in his gut got to him, and then he stopped to sigh. A bookshelf presented itself and after a moment, Zlatan went ahead and turned so he could let his forehead fall against it. He sighed again, closing his eyes. Then he put his hands up to grab the shelf—but no, Figo was really mad if he was slamming doors, and past experience had taught Zlatan that destroying Figo’s property just tended to make that worse. Even if Zlatan was just doing it so he could make the man hear him apologize, and damn it, but it hadn’t even been his fault. Not really. Not in the beginning.

“Fuck,” Zlatan muttered. He pressed his palms into the wood for another moment, then pushed himself up and back. Then he turned on one heel, only to raise his eyebrows. “What? Since when were you here?”

“Since, um.” Gila fumbled his sleeve back so he could check his watch. “Twenty minutes?”

And great, there’d been an audience. Well, okay, these days there always was an audience—sometimes Zlatan wondered if Figo kept around the fox-demons just because he’d gotten to like that—and Gila wasn’t that bad. Unless he told Gianluigi, and then…never mind that, Zlatan thought. He was frustrated enough without going there. “Well, I hope you weren’t waiting to go see Figo, because I don’t think he’s going to be seeing anybody for a while. For the love of…it wasn’t my fault! And anyway, what’s the big deal? I’ll just be like, an hour late. I can do it right here.”

Blinking rapidly, Gila sort of flapped weakly with his hands, like he was trying to be a chicken. His elbow went back and knocked a book off the shelf behind him; he jumped, then swore as he dove for it. He did catch it, but managed to hit his arm again on the way up.

“You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?” Zlatan said.

“No, not really,” Gila muttered, putting the book back. Then he looked at Zlatan, eyes wide and pleading. “Um, I’m sorry, I was listening but I—”

Zlatan rolled his eyes. “Oh, honestly. It’s not like you could’ve.”

They looked at each other for a couple seconds. Gila rubbed at his arm. Some shadow that might’ve been a fox-demon slipped across the edge of Zlatan’s vision, but when he looked, it was already gone. Too bad, because he could’ve used a nice fight with somebody. Maybe that idiot Villa, who thought he was some kind of badass when he sulked around staring moodily at Morientes instead of just going up and shoving Raúl off the wolf-demon, or something like that.

“I saw Luís already, actually.” A faint red tinge touched Gila’s cheeks a moment before he ducked his head and scratched at the back of it. His foot shuffled uncomfortably against the floor. “Sorry. I probably made it worse for you. He wasn’t too happy—”

“Oh, believe me, you didn’t. He’s just—it wasn’t—you know who he should be mad at?” Zlatan said, throwing up his hands. “ _Paolo_. Seriously. He just-- _looks_ this way sometimes, and damn it, I’m a demon! I’m not supposed to resist! He’s supposed to be the one who’s good! But no, he goes and—”

* * *

_Last Night_

“—had a party of twelve come in twenty minutes before closing. The cooks were…not happy.” Which the rise of Paolo’s brows as he moved aside said was an understatement. He absently evened up the papers in his hands against his knee, then shook his head as he leaned forward to get his pen from the table. “And Sandro was held up at that wine-tasting, so I went down to help out.”

After he’d settled himself on the couch, Zlatan tossed his arms over the back, pushed his legs out as far as he could and stretched till he could feel every bone in his spine pop. Then he flopped back, letting his head loll so he looked at the ceiling. “Sandro’s still not back. What kind of wine-tasting is this, anyway? The kind where I have to get up at three in the morning to track down a drunken angel making flowers sprout in solid concrete?”

“That’s more my line,” Paolo said, laughing quietly. He shifted back a bit, so the back of his head rested against the inside of Zlatan’s left elbow. “No, actually, it’s a wine dinner, because we’re one of their best customers and they’ve just casked the latest pressing. Nine courses, so he won’t get out for another hour at least, I think. Did you have a bad day?”

“It was pretty shitty. Literally. You know that thing Gigi was bugging you about? I checked it and turns out he was right. I spent all day in the city sewer system, and then took about five showers—what, do I still smell?”

Paolo immediately shook his head, but didn’t relax from the ramrod-straight position to which he’d jerked. He looked Zlatan over, his lips pressed tightly together, and then sighed and leaned back, now turned sideways to face Zlatan. His head was nearly on Zlatan’s shoulder and his knees bumped into the side of Zlatan’s leg. “No, you’re…you are fine, right?”

“Yeah,” Zlatan muttered. He pulled down his right arm, then ran his fingers back through his hair; he thought he could still smell himself, but after all that scrubbing, it probably was just psychological. Stupid fucking ghouls.

“Good.” Then Paolo relaxed all the way, his free hand coming up to rest over Zlatan’s left ribs. He moved his head and then the rest of him so he was leaning against Zlatan, and when Zlatan dropped his left arm to fall across Paolo’s back, the angel only nuzzled at Zlatan’s shoulder. “So…are you angry about that or that Gigi was right about something?”

Zlatan looked sharply at him, but Paolo was reading those papers he’d been working on—those everpresent invoices—and so all Zlatan saw was the top of Paolo’s head, demurely inclined. Not that he was fooled. “Just how’d he know they were down there? Is he that bored when Gila’s at work?”

“No, he has a job now.” Paolo glanced up, then shrugged and pulled his legs up onto the couch. “Translator for a publishing company. I think he was doing it for a university, originally, but they got too interested in why he’s so good with dead languages.”

“Because he’s just as dried-up and outdated,” Zlatan muttered. He started to reach for the TV remote, but then remembered that little favor Figo had asked for in return for borrowing his garden hose, since Zlatan damn well hadn’t been about to track that shit into his apartment. So he detoured his hand into his coat, and a moment later had those papers leaning against his knee. “Don’t look at me like that. He is.”

“He’s gotten better,” was all Paolo could manage, and even then he couldn’t keep himself from yawning in the middle of it. His hand dropped from Zlatan’s ribs, and then he twisted slightly so he could see what Zlatan was looking at. “What’s that?”

Zlatan grinned at him, then tickled Paolo’s side. Even though Sandro had the best reactions, Paolo still looked pretty funny when he was jerking and squirming like that. “That bored with your bills?”

“I—no…well, yes.” A little embarrassed, Paolo warily settled back against Zlatan’s side. He twitched when Zlatan lifted his hand, then looked ridiculously relieved when Zlatan merely settled that on his hip. Then he looked annoyed, and bumped at Zlatan’s shoulder with his head. “If you don’t want to tell me…”

“Nah, I don’t mind. I just like it when you’re all flustered. You’re cute that way,” Zlatan drawled. He watched the pink in Paolo’s cheeks go red, and then noticed that the skin beneath the angel’s eyes was on the puffy dark side. “It’s just something Figo wants me to translate for him. Demon language, and written in some weird ink so he can’t see all the symbols. He found it stuffed in some book he bought at auction and wants to know if it’s dangerous.”

Paolo answered with a sleepy-sounding ‘hmmm’ as he put his head back on Zlatan’s shoulder. In the middle of all the fuss, his arm had drifted so that now the invoices were lying across Zlatan’s lap. Now Paolo tilted them up so he could read them, but it wasn’t too long before they began to flutter downwards again.

After another look at the angel, Zlatan adjusted the arm he had over Paolo’s back to lie beneath the angel’s wrist. Then he went back to reading his stuff, since it wasn’t a language he saw too often, so he wanted to read the whole thing through before he tried translating. Maybe ten minutes later, something bumped into his hand. He turned it so it was palms-up, and Paolo’s wrist slowly slid into his grip. By then Paolo was definitely asleep, his whole body slack except for the shallow rise and fall of his chest.

The invoices were scraping at Zlatan’s leg, so he teased them out of Paolo’s fingers and dropped them on the table beside the couch. Then he kept on reading—the damn thing was _long_ , almost like a book itself, and in really tiny writing. It was hard to get how Figo hadn’t noticed it when he’d bought…then again, what had Figo said? Cesc had been bouncing around with headphones on, singing some American pop song so Zlatan hadn’t been able to hear the man too well. Maybe the papers had come in the same box as the book Figo bought, or whatever. Not that it mattered. Not that the writing was that interesting, frankly: so far it was just a bunch of lineages and begats, and all of it pretty common knowledge to anybody who knew much about magic.

When the phone rang, Zlatan nearly jerked off the couch because _he’d_ been nodding off, the reading was so boring. He snapped his arm around Paolo’s waist to keep the angel from sliding off, then grabbed the receiver from the couchside table.

It was Sandro, calling to say he was finally done and would be coming home. He wasn’t slurring his words and got all offended when Zlatan made a joke about the last time he’d had a hangover, so apparently they hadn’t gotten him drunk. “Too bad,” Zlatan muttered as he put the phone back.

“Hmm?” Paolo had woken up. Just now, still blinking rather fuzzily at Zlatan…and then he frowned and looked down at his empty hand. “What…where…”

Zlatan laughed. Then he pressed his mouth to Paolo’s temple when the angel tried to shoot him an irritated look, only to get hair in his eye and have to duck his head to rub it out. When Paolo predictably tried to poke his breastbone, Zlatan dropped his papers and grabbed the angel’s wrist. “On the table. And don’t even. You were drooling.”

“I was not. I—” A sudden fit of uncertainty caught Paolo and he glanced at Zlatan’s—dry—shoulder, then grimaced at himself as Zlatan snorted again. Then he shrugged and wriggled about a bit so he could face Zlatan. “Though if I had been, I would have apologized.”

“Yeah?” Zlatan said. He let go of Paolo’s wrist and started to reach for the papers, but before he could, Paolo had put his hand down on Zlatan’s chest.

Paolo shrugged again, the movement slower and somehow drawing the eye to the way his shirt rounded over his shoulders. He picked at Zlatan’s shirt, his fingertips grazing a button, while looking very steadily at Zlatan. “Yes,” he said, and then he leaned forward. A short but tingling graze of mouths. “Like that.”

Then he started to move back, but he stopped before Zlatan had gotten his fingers all the way into Paolo’s hair. He started to smile, his eyes not bleary now, but warm and affectionate and amused. His fingers flicked that one button out of its hole, then slipped into Zlatan’s shirt as Zlatan ran his thumb along Paolo’s jaw.

“That was pretty lousy.” Zlatan tilted back his head.

“Then let me try again,” Paolo breathed, and down he came. Longer this time, more teasing, with his tongue flicking temptingly into Zlatan’s mouth before he retreated; Zlatan jerked forward and caught the angel’s lower lip between his teeth.

He held Paolo by that for just a moment, then let him pull free. Another button of Zlatan’s shirt had been undone and now half of Paolo’s hand could fit into the flap, its fingers curling slightly to press into Zlatan’s skin. Paolo moved them in languid circles as he dropped to kiss at the side of Zlatan’s jaw, then looked up again.

“A lot better,” Zlatan pronounced, grinning.

Paolo smiled back, but then turned his head into the hand Zlatan had cupping it. His eyes half-closed and his mouth worked softly, carefully over the side of Zlatan’s thumb and onto the webbing between that and Zlatan’s forefinger. He bit lightly at that, watching Zlatan, and then nibbled his way up and off Zlatan’s finger. Then he looked directly at Zlatan, not smiling now but he didn’t need to, with the way his eyes were simmering. “I know you’re tired, but do you…feel like it?”

He still couldn’t say it, and it was ridiculous. But it was also drying up the words in Zlatan’s mouth, and—and well, Zlatan was _not_ turning this down. Finally, something good about the day.

So Zlatan started to pull Paolo down in a hurry, but halfway there something crunched, and then slid off Zlatan’s knee in a rustling flurry. Startled, Paolo glanced over. Then he bit his lip, clearly disappointed. “Oh, wait, you have that—”

“Fuck that. I can do that later,” Zlatan said, yanking Paolo down the rest of the way.

* * *

“Then Sandro came home, and I guess he’d had more after calling, because he was a _lot_ friendlier. It was kind of weird, but…” Zlatan paused, assessing the blush and the huge eyes, and then skipped ahead. It looked like if Zlatan gave any more details, Gila would crumple up and squeak himself to death. Besides, by now Gila had walked in on enough arguments to guess the rest. “So yeah, I didn’t finish it last night. I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s not that long. I could do it right here if Figo would open that door and give it back to me.”

For a couple minutes Gila just did that shocked-fawn stare. It got to the point that Zlatan was thinking about screaming to Figo that somebody had petrified the man, and maybe use that as an excuse to get the man talking to him again, but then Gila finally blinked. He looked down at his feet, then kept looking at them as he pushed his hands over his face and through his hair, messing up already chaotic spikes.

“No, I’m still pretty sure that that’s my fault. I mean, that Luís is so irritated right now, not Sandro and Paolo. This time. Um. Right.” Gila gave himself a shake, which actually did seem to help—he wasn’t any more confident these days, but since he’d taken up with Gianluigi, he did seem to be better at figuring out when he was being pathetic and when he was just being annoying. Then he looked apologetically up at Zlatan. “I’m really sorry. I saw you walk in and I was so busy thinking about how stupid I was that I didn’t call out. And I probably should’ve warned you.”

Zlatan raised his brows. Okay, Gila could be kind of grating with the lack of backbone, but not in the way that usually made people want to show how irritating that was. And somebody really needed to tell him that he had a real knack for acting like a kicked puppy at just the right time to get people to take pity on him. On the other hand…“Wait. So you were doing something for Figo? What would he ask you to do?”

“Nothing important, of course,” Gila said. He rubbed awkwardly at the side of his neck. “He just asked me to get some specialty food items. And I got them, but…”

* * *

_Yesterday Afternoon_

“Damn it!”

For a moment Alberto just looked at the bag he’d dropped. He’d gotten all the way from the car across the parking lot, through the back entrance, and up to his floor…and then he’d lost his grip. And while he couldn’t remember what was in that particular bag, he had heard an ominous squish when it’d hit the ground.

Well, there wasn’t a puddle spilling out and he could feel the egg carton with his left hand, so maybe it wasn’t that bad. Hopefully. Sighing anyway, Alberto tightened his grip on the bags still in his arms and gingerly tapped his door open with his foot.

The door had only swung a few centimeters when something stopped it with a thunk. Then it was jerked out of the way and Gianluigi was there, eyes oddly wide and leaning out so far that Alberto flinched and nearly lost another bag. He cursed again and then scrambled to keep hold of them all; something touched the side of his face in the middle of all that, but he was too preoccupied to really pay any attention to it. Then the groceries began to settle in what felt like secure positions in his arms, and Alberto could breathe in relief.

And notice that Gianluigi was now sort of petting his hair, and still staring at him like Alberto was about to pass out or something dramatic like that. Alberto blinked, probably looking his confusion, and Gianluigi winced and withdrew his hand to rub it against his hip. “What happened?”

“I just—dropped—” Alberto nodded downwards. He watched Gianluigi look down, then stoop to get the bag, and then his brain started working. “Oh, nothing. I just dropped some of the food. I’m fine, but I don’t know if that is. What’s in it?”

Gianluigi glanced at him while straightening up, then warily pulled open the bag. As he turned away from the door, he hunched his head to peer at the contents. “Cheese. Mozzarella?”

“Oh. Oh, okay. That’s not so bad. It’s…I was going to cut it up anyway,” Alberto muttered, hurrying in. He paused to tap the door shut with his heel, then was going to fumble the lock on with his elbows and maybe a wrist, if he could swing it, but then Gianluigi’s back was in the way.

There was some clicking, and then Gianluigi turned around to stare hard at Alberto again, like he was looking for some signal. Gianluigi had adapted to fallen life—neither of them really liked that description, but Alberto couldn’t think of a better one and Gianluigi preferred not to bring up the change—extremely quickly, but sometimes he still had moments where he didn’t get human living. At least, Alberto thought that that was what was going on. He’d gotten much better at reading Gianluigi, but he still wasn’t faultless at it. With his job he was mostly used to reading facial expressions and looking for covert hand-gestures to figure out people’s moods. But Gianluigi didn’t gesture too much, and used the same expression for being confused, upset, embarrassed or mildly annoyed, so Alberto had had to start looking at other things.

So he _thought_ that the weird way Gianluigi was holding his arms, partially up so their elbows awkwardly pointed in different directions and were also at different levels, meant Gianluigi was trying to figure out what to do. “Um, can you just put that in the sink for me? It’s kind of dripping now and I need to put this other stuff away before I—shit!”

Another bag slipped from his fingers, but this time, Gianluigi was there to gracefully swoop a hand under it before it’d even gotten to Alberto’s knee-level. Then the follow-through motion saw him stand up, pivot and take a step towards the kitchen while Alberto was still cursing.

Though Alberto shut up then, and it was pretty much just to watch. It was just so…elegant, the way the angel moved. Even just ambling across the room, Gianluigi still moved like something from a higher plane.

Especially, Alberto thought, in comparison. By the time he’d gotten to the kitchen to join the angel, he was slightly breathless and a light sweat had broken out on his forehead so his hair was sticking in his eyes. He got the rest of the groceries onto the counter and he had no idea how, since to him it was mostly a mad panicked rush as things started slipping and bumping and shifting in unexpected ways. Then he stood back to take a deep breath, pushing the hair out of his eyes and then running his hands back over the top of his head, and saw that Gianluigi had saved a couple figs. “Oh, thanks. Wow, I’m a mess today…no, those can stay out on the counter. I was going to…I mean, I was thinking they could be dessert? Um, do you like figs?”

Gianluigi paused, then stepped back from the fridge. He started to close the door, but then just let it go when Alberto hastily ducked beneath the angel’s arm with a double handful of meats. Then he started stacking the figs in an empty basket. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten them, actually.”

When Alberto looked at him, Gianluigi had his head slightly down and the side of his mouth that was visible was pulled down. His fingers hovered over the basketed figs, then slowly picked one up and turned it about, his thumb rubbing over the skin.

“They look nice,” Gianluigi added, a bit louder but more uncertainly.

“I think they’ll taste good. The fall harvest is better, but these smelled really good for spring figs…” And Alberto was babbling again. He pushed the heel of his hand against his cheek, then raked back his hair. Then he noticed that Gianluigi was looking curiously at him over one shoulder and winced. “Ah—can you hand me that bag? The one with the carrots?”

Which Gianluigi did so, and Alberto gratefully busied himself with rearranging his fridge’s contents so the new additions could fit. The air spilling from the fridge also helped cool his flush—still a little due to the effort of carrying all the groceries up—and his thoughts so he started feeling like he could have a normal conversation with somebody. Except he was out of vegetables.

It took him a moment to realize that, since he was so caught up in thinking how calm he was now that he couldn’t tell he’d been groping at empty air for a while. For a moment Alberto went right back to nervous mess—and then he sighed, and gave up on himself. He turned around to ask for the next bag and instead he found himself looking at Gianluigi’s back. The angel had wandered over to poke through the bags…or at least it sounded as if that was what he was doing. Occasionally part of a bunch of celery or a jar of stuffed peppers would show to one side of him, which sort of backed up that idea. And also Gianluigi was making little noises: snorts, puzzled ‘hmms’ and sometimes a weird sniffle, like Zlatan trying to smell the air for other demons.

Come to think of it, this was the first time Gianluigi had been around when Alberto had come home with groceries. Gianluigi’s job let him work from home most of the time, but he tended to sleep in the early morning and late afternoon, which was when Alberto got back from work. If he was working the opening-to-lunch shift, anyway; if he was working the second shift, then he usually got out after the stores were all closed and couldn’t run any errands before going home. And Gianluigi didn’t cook, either. Not because he didn’t want to or wasn’t interested, but his magic was still a little iffy and the last time he’d tried to use the stove, he’d turned one of the burners into a dove. Alberto had called Figo, who’d brought Xavi with him, and they’d been discussing whether it’d be better to just replace the burner or turn the dove back when there’d been a squawk and a thud in the next room.

It’d been a little gross, and the stain in the carpet had taken Figo’s spellwork to get it out, but Alberto had decided he couldn’t really hold the incident against Xavi. The demon had went off before he’d heard what was the problem, the bird had still been flying around, and anyway, it was sort of natural instincts for foxes. Plus he’d showed up a day later and fixed the stove.

“Oh,” Gianluigi said, blinking. He’d been in the middle of setting a can aside when he’d finally noticed Alberto watching.

He jerked his arm back so the can rattled onto the counter; Alberto flinched, then dove forward to grab the can just before it rolled off onto the floor. After setting that down, he reached for the celery, then pulled back his hand. Then he put his palm flat against the counter, and then lifted it to press at the side of his nose. “God. Um. Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

“I’m slowing you down,” Gianluigi muttered, dropping his head. Then he started to shove over some asparagus, but a few of the tips snagged on something and snapped off. His head came up—Alberto must’ve made some noise—and he looked at Alberto for a second, eyes wide and searching. Then he grimaced. “Sorry. What do…what do I do with these?”

“No, it’s okay, I’m cooking those anyway and they have to get chopped up—”

“If I’m doing something wrong—” Gianluigi paused. His eyelids twitched, like he was going to close them in irritation, but in the end he just straightened up. Took a breath, and then spoke a little more softly and deliberately. “I don’t want to ruin dinner, or get in your way. You already…you look like…work wasn’t…”

He trailed off into one of his rare gesturing moments, which unfortunately seemed more about his frustration than about explaining more. Alberto automatically reached for one of the flapping hands anyway, but stopped when Gianluigi abruptly went still and silent, staring at him so he really could’ve used the fridge to chill his face again.

That was a stupid thought. Grimacing, Alberto shook his head and grabbed Gianluigi’s wrist. He opened his mouth, closed it, and then shrugged. It was going to be a ramble, but somehow Gianluigi usually managed to get what he meant. “No, really, it’s fine. If you want to look at what’s there, or um, have questions…well, it’s kind of part of work, checking out food. I don’t mind.”

“But you’re off work.” Gianluigi lowered his arms a little, then dropped his free one to put that hand on the counter. He let Alberto hang onto his other wrist, and even turned it slightly so it wasn’t so awkward for Alberto. “Aren’t you…tired? You were panting when you got in, and you have sweat on your face…”

“Oh. _Oh_ \--no, that’s just because the elevator’s not working or something, so I had to take the stairs up with all these bags.” The one Alberto picked up abruptly began to tear at the bottom, so he quickly put it back down. Then he had a better idea and tipped it over so he could get the contents out of it and begin putting those away in the cabinets over his head. “They’re pretty heavy. Actually, work was good today. No big fusses.”

Something closed behind Alberto and he looked just in time to see Gianluigi pulling his foot back from the now-shut fridge. Alberto didn’t even wince at this point, but just looked gratefully back as Gianluigi came up beside him.

“I like what I do. I don’t know if I ever said that before, but I do…no, I do! Even when it’s horrible, it’s still…I’d rather be having a horrible time working in a restaurant than working in a hospital, or a pet clinic. Which is where my parents wanted to see me, but I couldn’t get my degree.” After crumpling up a couple empty bags, Alberto backed up so he could stuff them in the trashcan under the sink. Then he took a sniff, made a face, and changed the bag while he was down there. “That was really embarrassing, but I think it worked out.”

Alberto tied off the full bag and held onto it for a couple seconds, then decided it wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t just take it out in the morning when he went to work and set it in the corner he didn’t use very often. Then he went back to the sink, rolling his sleeves up as he went, to wash off his hands. He was turning on the water when he finally noticed that Gianluigi was looking oddly at him.

“You really like it?” Gianluigi said. He spoke a little fast, and then abruptly turned to poke at one of the remaining bags on the counter. Then he looked at Alberto again, still surprised but with something softening the edges of it. “Every time I go there, you seem so rushed and worried. And that demon is always bringing in his troubles, or Sandro is screaming at someone. Or there’s fornicating in the—”

“—that’s not what it’s really like. No, I’m serious. You just seem to come around on the weird days. Shit. I mean, you aren’t there when…oh, shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that how it sounded.” And just then Alberto accidentally curled his fingers so he got a spray of water up his right sleeve. He jumped back, then flapped his arm as he knocked off the water. Then he realized that flapping was just getting more stuff wet and not really drying him off, and he pressed his hands over his face again. God, he needed to stop flipping out. “Sorry. But no…most days, when everyone’s working together, it’s nice. It’s not…I get worried when it’s not good because I like it so much. I’m really happy with my job and I don’t want to lose it.”

A bit of soapy water got in Alberto’s eye and he yanked down his hands. Then he put one back up, but used a dry part of his wrist to rub at his eye till the burning subsided. After that he was going to rinse off the rest of the soap, but something touched the side of his face. High up on his cheek, just a little to the left of his eye and suddenly that stopped burning.

Alberto turned around, and after a moment, Gianluigi tentatively slid his hand so it was lightly fitted against Alberto’s cheek. He looked Alberto’s face over very carefully, then nodded slightly. “Good. I want you to be happy with everything. I like it best when you look happy.”

“Well, I am. I really…I am,” Alberto finally said. It was a pretty dumb response, but the way Gianluigi looked, Alberto had to say something. “I just get flustered really easily, and…well, never mind, I’ve always been like that. Was your day all right? Was everything okay? Did anything happen?”

Gianluigi’s face twitched. He looked away, then at the floor as his hand dropped slightly. When Alberto reached up and hesitantly touched it, Gianluigi raised his head in a hurry and stilled his arm. He looked at it as Alberto lightly clasped his hand, and then slowly, in little jerks, moved their knuckles back to brush against Alberto’s cheek. “It was fine. I…the flowers on that blue pillow were real for about a half-hour, but I figured out how to turn them back, and how I did it in the first place. I’m not about to do it again.”

“Flowers? Really?” That pillow had been a house-warming gift from a cousin and had big pink roses on it, so picturing those suddenly springing out into the real thing made Alberto laugh. Then he stopped himself and glanced up at Gianluigi, but the angel didn’t seem offended, thankfully.

Actually, Gianluigi’s hand had gone very still against Alberto’s face, and Gianluigi also had his lower lip caught under his teeth. He pulled that out when he figured out what Alberto was looking at, then started to turn his head. Then he looked back, and very slowly, his other hand came up to cup the other side of Alberto’s face.

“Really,” he said. He paused, then moved his shoulders uncertainly. “Actually, I could show you if you do want to see what it was like. I…I love what you look like when you’re laughing.”

Alberto laughed again, but nervously, which he didn’t think was what Gianluigi was talking about. He ducked his head, but Gianluigi’s hands didn’t let him get too far, so he looked up again. Then he put his hands on the angel’s wrists and tried smiling—that came with a surprising lack of effort. So surprising that he snickered at himself, and suddenly had Gianluigi’s mouth covering his.

He didn’t do anything, he was so startled. He really wished he could get rid of that reaction, since whenever he had it Gianluigi always pulled away looking terrified. And it was such a strange emotion to see on somebody as tall and obviously able to look after himself as Gianluigi—and then also, it just hurt to look at. It made him feel more crappy than any stupid thing he’d ever done.

Gianluigi started to say something, but Alberto pulled him back. And then Gianluigi was surprised and they clacked teeth; Alberto winced, then put up with the slight burst of pain till he could get his hands around the angel’s neck. His fingers slipped beneath Gianluigi’s collar and Gianluigi shivered, then adjusted the tilt of his head so they were actually kissing, his hands sliding back to thread into Alberto’s hair. He ran his thumbs across Alberto’s cheekbones, his tongue flicking a question over Alberto’s lower lip, and Alberto opened his mouth. Tugged Gianluigi down a bit, then moved closer so the angel didn’t have to bend as much.

“I’m glad you’re home,” Gianluigi said quietly a moment later, stroking Alberto’s cheek. Then he frowned. “Or…wait, do I say…”

A tiny, tiny part of Alberto had been thinking for a while that Gianluigi took some pointers on human behavior from cable movies, but he’d never actually caught the angel watching when Alberto hadn’t already turned on the TV. Not that it mattered, really, and anyway, they probably did a better job explaining than Alberto did, and…Alberto just kissed Gianluigi again. “That’s fine. I’m…I like work, but I’m glad to finally get home, too.”

Gianluigi smiled at him, suddenly relaxed and unguarded and just so…cleanly perfect. Like the smooth, pure taste of really good olive oil, where putting garlic or any other flavor in was almost a crime because the olives by themselves had put everything that was necessary into the oil.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, and then bent down to Alberto again.

* * *

“So…we…didn’t get to putting away the rest of the groceries for a couple hours, since we were um, busy. And I had to clean off the kitchen floor first, too. So the stuff I bought for Figo spoiled and I can’t get more till Monday,” Alberto confessed, stammering and blushing the whole way through. He fiddled with his cuffs.

He looked up when Zlatan laughed, eyes huge and terrified like he’d done something wr—or maybe because Zlatan had accidentally let his fangs out. After Zlatan slid those back in, Alberto seemed to calm down a little. He even tried out a sheepish smile before he went back to looking freaked out.

“I’m really sorry about all of it, especially since he paid ahead of time…is he going to be mad for long?” Those cuffs were going to lose their buttons if Gila picked any more at them.

Zlatan leaned against the shelf and thought about it. “No, Figo usually gets over things pretty quickly. Besides, he doesn’t have room to talk—the last _three_ times I’ve been here, he hasn’t had his shirt on. Once all he was wearing was Raúl.”

Alberto started to smile, then looked worriedly at Zlatan. When he figured out that yes, it was okay to mock Figo when Zlatan was already doing it, he finished the smile. “Oh, good. Because I wasn’t finished apologizing when he…”

“Yeah, that is weird. Usually he’s not so ticked off that he’s slamming doors in _my_ face. I could have that thing blown out in two seconds if I wasn’t in such a good mood.” Then Zlatan looked at the door again. He started to let the comment go, but then had second thoughts and shrugged. “Well, okay. I wouldn’t be feeling all that great for the next month, but I could still do it. But just hang on a couple minutes and he’ll…or do you have to rush back before Sandro brains you with a frying pan?”

“No, today’s my day off. I just…I was going to go with Gianluigi to a movie in an hour.” As he spoke, Gila made a weird little hitch with his shoulders and ducked his head. His voice dropped as well, and even though he usually talked with a bunch of stammers and hesitations, that little pause in the middle had been a bit more…deliberate. “Um. Zlatan? Can I…can I ask you something about…about…”

Usually Zlatan would’ve let the man fumble around for at least another minute, but he was still a little annoyed from Figo. And he had had other plans, too, and if he had to ditch those to sit around and wait out Figo’s temper, he didn’t want to do it with Gila’s neuroses for company. “What? Just spit it out, okay? I promise I won’t bite off your head.”

“Can you do actually that? I mean, can you stretch your jaw that far, like—I saw this snake special on—oh, never mind.” When Gila got flustered, his mind went to weird places for comfort. No wonder he was so nervous all the time. “It’s just—do Sandro and Paolo…want to…I mean, every single time, even if I’m just pecking him on the cheek, Gianluigi sort of…”

The funny thing was, Zlatan thought, Gila’s hand-gestures certainly included a full set of vulgar illustrations. But the man was blushing like mad again, so Zlatan tried not to laugh. He tried really hard, and even thought about Freddie and Henke fucking to gross himself out. “You mean, do all fallen angels want sex at the drop of a hat?”

Alberto _flamed_ up. An egg thrown at his face would’ve cooked in ten seconds. His hands clamped together against his thighs, then slowly flattened out to rub at his trousers as he reluctantly nodded. And then they spazzed out, waving everywhere as he frantically tried to explain himself. “I’m not mad or annoyed at anything. I get that it’s still weird to him and angels—that he feels things differently now and stuff, and I’m okay with it. God, that sounds stupid. No, no, I mean, I like it. I mean—oh, damn it, it’s just I can’t even get my socks off and I just want to know if that’s normal? For him?”

Zlatan’s lips were twitching. And he was really, honestly, truly trying. He was. Okay, okay, Freddie making googly-eyes at Henke. Freddie making googly-eyes at Henke. Freddie…okay, now Zlatan thought he could talk without losing it. “Well, look, we’re talking about a grand total of three fallen angels that I know about, and I’ve never fucked Gigi so I don’t know how…how true this is. There’s literature, but it’s all written by idiot monks who wouldn’t know what to do with their dicks if they were possessed by an incubus so…never mind. The answer’s probably yeah, it’s normal. Angels _really_ like sex, once they can actually _have_ it.”

“Oh,” Alberto finally said. He shuffled around and stared at the floor, then absently wiped at his temple. “Oh. Okay.”

“Though Sandro doesn’t really pounce so much as try to knock out my teeth and then get distracted—God, he’s got a short attention span sometimes—and Paolo doesn’t pounce.” Not really. Though come to think of it, that whole deal on the couch with the sneak snuggling had turned into a pretty regular habit. It’d happened three times just last week, and Zlatan had been in…three times. The week before, when he hadn’t had some damn problem of Gianluigi’s to track down, it’d…been pretty much every night. And Sandro tended to do it too, though of course he claimed he was just making things fair, given the disproportionate amount of couch-space Zlatan took up. Zlatan privately thought the angel just didn’t want to admit Zlatan made a better footwarmer than those stupid ratty slippers. “But I don’t think he got his socks off last time. I don’t think I was wearing socks. Huh…no, maybe I was.”

Alberto was pushing at his face again, and the little bits of cheeks and forehead Zlatan could see around the man’s fingers were about the same color as a good tomato sauce. “All right, thanks. That’s…thank you. And I, um, don’t think I need to know about your socks.”

“You sure? They’re really nice, all soft and tight and warm,” Zlatan grinned.

“ _No_ ,” Gila firmly said. Then he peeked anxiously out between two fingers, and _then_ he seemed to realize he was being more silly than usual and hastily smoothed his hands back over his head. “No, really, I’m okay now. Thanks.”

“Well, if you say—”

The door burst open. Figo stood there, the untranslated papers in one hand, a salt shaker in the other, and a puffed-out black fox, like somebody had finally hit Cesc with an electric shock prod, clinging to his shoulder. He had an expression of grim determination on his face, which…well, which for Zlatan was usually a good sign. But then, Figo generally wasn’t directing it at him.

“Zlatan,” Figo gravely said. Pause. “I fucked up.”

* * *

“He looks like he wants to smush me.”

“You’re staring at him, dummy. Maybe you’re making him uncomfortable.”

“ _Eww_. Honestly, Silva, like I’m ever going to look at an _angel_ like that. Even a fallen one.”

“And who was talking about how ‘sparkly’ Paolo’s eyes were the other day?”

“I was making an observation! About what he looks like when he sees Zlatan! It had nothing to do with what I think about him. And anyway, Paolo is not Gianluigi, and Gianluigi is—”

Something black clomped down just in front of them. Cesc jumped straight up, David Silva melted into the floor and Sergio banged himself into a footstool, then rolled away in human-form, rubbing at his head and looking dazed.

Gianluigi stared down at them, expressionless but still exuding a serious air of menace. He slowly moved his foot back. “You are making me uncomfortable, and I would like to rid the world of you. But I am trying to abide by the rules of my host. Trying.”

Then the angel walked off, stepping over Sergio like Sergio was some piece of litter in his way that he didn’t want to get stuck to the bottom of his shoe. He crossed the room, but then Gila walked the other way. The man was on the phone with Paolo and apparently didn’t see Gianluigi coming, since he just kept going towards the far wall, absently pulling at his hair and making a desperately confused face. So Gianluigi made a sharp turn and then went after Gila—but too slow to catch up, since Gila gestured helplessly so hard that he spun himself around, bounced off a shelf and then wandered off in a different direction. Still not seeing Gianluigi, still trying to answer Paolo and obviously looking for Figo.

“Told you,” the black spot on the carpet said. Then Silva popped back into solidity, grinning so hard his tongue was lolling out. He thumped his tail a couple times for emphasis. “And hey, he did try to squish you.”

Sergio looked at him, then rolled his eyes as he shifted back into fox-form. “And you think that’s a good thing? Well, you can stay here and see if he comes closer next time, if you want. I’m going to get Raúl.”

“Like he’d get close enough. I’d—” But Sergio was already off, trotting so fast that there was no way he would’ve heard. And when Cesc had had a really good comeback, too.

Silva was still smirking, so Cesc fought down the urge to pout and gave his left forepaw a couple of licks instead. Then he hopped over the other fox and rounded the couch so he could see where Gila had gotten off to.

The man was _still_ on the phone, but Gianluigi had finally cornered him. Sort of. It was hard not to giggle, actually: Gila had plopped himself into a chair and was trying to describe to Paolo what sabbat Figo had gone to last week, only he clearly had no idea what a sabbat was. And Gianluigi obviously did, from the way his lips were twitching and his hands were half-raised towards Gila, like he wanted to interrupt. But he just…Cesc climbed up onto the couch-arm for a better view…it was like Gianluigi just didn’t know _how_. Except he interrupted everybody else all the time, and didn’t seem to give a damn about how much it annoyed them, so he did know how. He just couldn’t do it to Gila.

“He’s being _shy_ ,” Silva said in an awed tone. Something wet touched Cesc’s tail, and then Silva clambered up to perch on the sofa-arm next to Cesc. “He’s…that’s kind of cute, actually.”

“Gianluigi is _not_ cute. Not in any meaning of the word.” Cesc moved his tail over so Silva had some more room. Then something in the sofa was poking his butt, so he got up and stomped at it till the bump was flattened out.

That made him miss a couple seconds, so when he looked back up again, Gila wasn’t in the seat anymore. Instead he was standing up and had one hand in his trouser-pocket, looking relieved while Gianluigi took a turn at the phone. Which wasn’t improving Gianluigi’s thundercloud of a face, but he got the essentials to Paolo in about thirty seconds.

Gianluigi had some trouble turning off the cell-phone, so Cesc took the opportunity to bound off the couch and scurry over to nudge at Gila’s ankle. When the man looked down, Cesc put on his best pleading-face; it probably helped that Cesc was still a bit frizzed out from when Figo had gotten the news and had accidentally dropped his lightning ball on Cesc. _That_ man was so damn lucky that he knew what to do with a tail in bed, because even if it hadn’t really hurt Cesc, it hadn’t been fun. And grooming oneself when every lick shocked the tongue was even less so.

“Oh, hi.” Gila immediately bent over and scooped up Cesc. He kind of got that wrong, leaving Cesc’s hindleg to dangle weirdly, but then Gianluigi handed him the phone and Gila absently plumped Cesc to get a hand free, thus getting his arms around Cesc the right way. He was all right when he wasn’t thinking about how he was going to do something. “So what’d he say?”

And the moment the phone was put away, Gila was scratching behind Cesc’s ears. Cesc never got why the man seemed to think he was so crap, since he’d known to do that without anybody explaining it to him. Which almost never happened.

“He says that Sandro might be able to source some,” Gianluigi said, looking grumpily at Cesc. So Cesc smirked and Gianluigi’s eyes narrowed. “Though I don’t know what good that will do. Neither of them know much about this. The one who does would be that demon, and he’s already here.”

“Right…where did Zlatan go, actually? Paolo asked if he should bring over some dinner and I was going to pass along the message but I forgot. I’d better have Zlatan call back.” Frowning, Gila pivoted on his heel to look at the rest of the room. Then he edged past Gianluigi, who was looking like he wanted to kill Cesc and beg Gila to do something at the same time, and who was really straining that non-expression on his face. “Huh. Wasn’t he down the hall a second ago?”

“He’s in the bathroom translating that thing where Figo can’t be cranky at him,” Silva said, coming up. Then he returned Gila’s blank stare.

The ear-skritching was making Cesc really boneless, but he just managed to flip an ear at the other fox-demon. “Silva, you idiot, you’re barking. He can’t understand you.”

“It said that that demon is hiding in the bathroom from Figo,” Gianluigi muttered.

“Oh. Thanks, David.” Gila started down the hall, but then stopped and furrowed his brow. Then he looked up at Gianluigi. “Can you hold onto Cesc for a moment? I’ll be right back, and then after we find Figo, I guess…well, I guess we might as well go to the movie. I’m pretty sure I’m just getting in the way now, since Sandro’s bringing the stuff.”

Gianluigi was all distracted with shaking his head and looking weirdly pained, and okay, Cesc was distracted watching Gianluigi be weird. So suddenly Cesc was in Gianluigi’s—gigantic—hands, and both of them were looking at Gila’s back retreating down the hall.

“You’re never in the way,” Gianluigi said under his breath, sounding like he was offended at the idea, and also sort of sad. But that only lasted a moment, because then Cesc squirmed to get a view of the angel’s expression and Gianluigi looked down at him, lips going tight and thin.

Cesc went stiff, then stuck up his ears. “You can’t smite me. He likes me.”

Still expressionless, Gianluigi simply swiveled his hands upside-down. He watched Cesc fall flailing and yipping to the ground, and then just stood there as Cesc shakily rolled onto his feet and spent a couple anxious seconds licking all over himself, checking for injuries; demons were pretty bouncy but not totally indestructible. But thankfully, everything seemed to be fine.

“That was a moment.” Gianluigi’s mouth twisted down at the corners. “A longer moment than I would ever want.”

David had bounded up to poke worriedly at Cesc too, and now he puffed himself up as high as he could, glaring up at Gianluigi. “You _suck_.”

“I’m an angel. I’m heavenly,” Gianluigi said, stalking back to the couch.

He settled there, and David and Cesc stared at each other. Then David cocked an ear. “You think he means that, or is he capable of sarcasm?”

“He can be sarcastic, believe me. But he was serious just now,” Cesc sniffed. He spared Gianluigi one last look, only because the asshole really did seem to make Gila happy, before he headed off towards the door to the stairs. “Come on, let’s go check on Luís.”

It took David a moment, but then he happily came along. Which Cesc was glad to see, since lately David had been acting pretty depressed, not wanting to do anything—and that other moron with the same name hadn’t noticed at all. Cesc was trying to leave it alone, since he was busy just with keeping an eye on Gianluigi’s wayward magic for Gila, but honestly, he would have to do something if it kept up. They had a good thing here, and even besides that, Figo didn’t deserve having some stupid drama explode in his place. Maybe Raúl and Villa didn’t think about that kind of thing, since Figo had opened up a portal for them and they hadn’t had to claw their way through an unstable one like Cesc and Xavi and Andrés had.

David let Cesc melt under the door first, then came afterward. For all that he was a little older than Cesc, he still tended to forget about basics like not going solid till the whole tail was through—Cesc sighed and plopped down to wait till the other demon had finished sucking on the now-sore tip.

“’o theenk that—” David took his tail out of his mouth “—sorry. I was saying, you think this is going to be a big deal for Figo? Gianluigi’s a jerk, okay, but he was really powerful and he should know what he’s talking about.”

“About _angel_ stuff. Paolo probably knows more about this than he does, the snob.” Though Cesc knew he was sounding a little more unsure of himself, and couldn’t really protest that too much. He knew a lot and had been through even more, so usually playing the ‘you’re too young’ card with him was a really quick way to get him mad, but on the other hand, he knew there was a lot he didn’t know about. And that he didn’t want to know about, to be honest. “Well. Raúl’s working on it, and then Figo has Zlatan on it too. And if worst comes to worst, he can always call Henrik. Henrik’s the Librarian of Hell, so he knows everything.”

For a moment David perked up. But then a muffled curse drifted up from below and his ears drooped again. He got up and walked over to the edge, looking worriedly downward. “Yeah, but would Henrik help with something like this? I mean, it’s not like some Archduke is coming to pick a fight with us. Figo kind of…you know…”

“He didn’t _mean_ to. He didn’t even know this would happen, and he’s usually really good about finding out that sort of thing in advance, so it’s got to be really obscure,” Cesc protested.

“I know, I know!” But David kept staring down anyway. “But Cesc…he did sort of agree without anybody forcing him. Even if he didn’t know he was doing it, or what was going to happen…that stuff doesn’t count with magic.”

Yeah. Which was why Cesc was making fun of Gianluigi instead of snuggling up to Figo, like he normally would if given a choice. Mocking angels could be hilarious, but nudging Luís into bed was downright spectacular. Plus he stayed around to pet and make food and palpate hairball-clogged bellies without turning a hair. It was hard just finding fellow tribemates to do that sort of thing all the time, let alone people.

“I know,” Cesc said quietly. He padded over beside David and looked down as well. “I know.”

* * *

Luís let his arms flop down to either side of the chair. “I cannot believe this.”

“Look, I’m really trying here, but—”

“No. No…Zlatan, for once it’s not you, all right? I just…cannot believe this. I _can’t_ ,” Luís muttered. Because he couldn’t. He really couldn’t.

He hadn’t raised any hell in ages—in fact, lately he’d been doing a lot more pacifying it, and giving its minions disciplinary smacks on the bottom when they got out of it, and good God, he’d even been counseling it on occasion. At least, counseling its spawn, and on ways to maintain loving, affectionate relationships with ex-angels. If that wasn’t contributing towards the universal good, he honestly didn’t know what was. And now he had this on his plate—and not only that, but it was completely his fault. Zlatan had been elsewhere for the whole week, Alberto hadn’t put in a single panicked call to Luís since the burner incident, and the foxes had been quiet. Too qui—no, now Luís was stretching.

Damn it.

“You should call Henke.” When Luís looked up, Zlatan had once again abandoned his translating to do something else. All right, it was staring worriedly back while hunching his shoulders and pulling up his knees in a way that made Luís sure Zlatan had been nothing but knotted limbs as a…whatever baby demons were called. The authorities didn’t agree on that terminology, like so much else. “Seriously. _He’d_ \--”

“I already got in touch with him. He says you need to finish translating that—” Zlatan reared up, taking offense, then ducked his head with a grumble “—so we can figure out just what I’ve gotten into, but that there’s no way to undo this.”

Zlatan didn’t even pick up his pen. He made a move in that direction, but then scooted back on the couch, chewing his lip. Some hair drifted into his eyes and he pushed it out of the way so sharply that then he had to shake off the strands he’d torn loose. “That’s ridiculous. Come on, there’s got to be something. Are you sure Henrik heard you right? He’s…um, sometimes he doesn’t understand right off why something is important.”

“Because it’s not really, and you’re mad about something else that you don’t feel like talking about. Look, Ibra, I explained it to him, and he’s got enough of a vested interest in this that he _intimately_ understands why it’s upsetting. There’s no way,” Luís snapped.

“Okay, _fine_.” With a snap that nearly broke the damn thing, Zlatan flicked the pen up into his hand and then irritably bent over the table again. He picked up the next sheet of demon-script, scanned it, then stabbed the pen tip down on the next line of the translation. “I’m just trying to help. If you’re gonna be all doom-ridden about it, then I guess there’s no point to it.”

Luís opened his mouth, then shut it. Then he exhaled, careful to do it too shallowly for it to sound like a sigh, and stared at the stiff curve of Zlatan’s back as Zlatan flew through two pages, then threw down his pen and shoved his hands into his hair. The demon rubbed at his eyes, then trapped his nose between his hands. He pulled his fingers slowly down the sides, mumbling to himself, before reluctantly flipping back three pages to where he’d been before his temper had taken over him. Sometimes it was…well, it was just impossible to think that Zlatan could’ve pestered Luís’ grandparents.

Not that that didn’t make it any less of a fact, and the facts just were what they were. They didn’t care whether one liked them or not, Luís reminded himself, and then he got up out of his seat. He went around the table, then reached back to ruffle Zlatan’s hair before he went towards the door. “I wouldn’t say doom-ridden so much as extremely pessimistic. And also, I need a new Spanish supplier.”

Zlatan’s head had been lifting under Luís’ hand, and when Luís looked back, the demon…once again wasn’t translating. But he at least didn’t look like the world was falling in on him. “Why?”

“Because he’s the one who sold me that damn book,” Luís muttered. Couldn’t help kicking the floor, and then had to jump back as part of the boards suddenly bulged up. A moment later, a very startled Iker emerged—he would stay wood-colored instead of being an easy-to-spot shadow—and Luís had to bend down to reassuringly scratch the fox-demon’s head. “Look, it’s done and I can’t get out of it, so we’d better figure out what I’m going to do about it. And the first step is—”

“I’m translating, I’m translating! I’m sorry, okay? I just—Paolo wanted sex, and…and this is really outdated language. And it’s…” Zlatan gave the sheet a quarter-turn, squinted at it, and then turned it back “…I need a chart or something. And how is this important again? This is just a genealogy, I think.”

Luís stopped scratching Iker’s head. Iker blinked and made a noise that was only vaguely about confusion and much more “ _Why,_ what did small furry me ever do to you to make you do that?” Which made Luís give him a look, since generally Iker was a little better than that. And which was fortunate for Zlatan, since it distracted Luís from getting upset at him again. “Zlatan, the problem is that…Iker, there’s somebody on the steps.”

Puzzled, Iker cocked his head. Then his ears lowered and he put down his head, trying to tuck it under a forepaw. A second later he seemed to realize that Luís wasn’t just going to leave him to his embarrassment, and five seconds after that, the human version was sheepishly hooking a thumb towards the door. “Uh, yes. Sorry, it sounded like you two were talking so I didn’t want to just interrupt, but…there’s a fallen angel that wants to see you? Not Gianluigi. But he’s still sort of snappy.”

“Oh, Sandro.” Zlatan hooked an arm over the couch-arm and twisted about, then frowned and checked the clock on the table. “About time. What the fuck has he been doing? Did he buy the whole cow and then get out the bits he needed? He doesn’t have to be that picky. It’s not like we’re entertaining _Michelin_ again.”

By then Sandro was at the door and the sensible thing to do was to ignore Zlatan and let in the angel. Sandro didn’t come around too often, hence why not all the foxes knew him yet, but when he did, he usually _was_ in a snippy mood. Which to be honest, tended to put Luís into one as well, since for God’s sake, he just ran a bookshop, not Zlatan’s life. He would’ve thought that those two had learned to take their spats elsewhere by now.

No. When Luís opened the door, Sandro was looking at him for exactly as long as it took to shove the paper bag he was holding in the direction of Luís’ chest. Then Sandro was peering over Luís’ shoulder, brows knitted together and upper lip curling, bobbing back and forth on his toes because yes, Luís could be something of an obstruction when he wanted to be and yes, sometimes Luís did. Honestly. How did these celestial beings get through the centuries without learning what five-year-olds knew looked silly?

“I’d think that working a spell of this complexity would require even more attention to detail than serving a _Michelin_ review—” Halfway to barging past Luís, Sandro sneezed. The angel did manage to get up a hand in time to muffle it, and therefore keep Luís’ shoulder clean, but when he raised his head he somehow looked even more disgusted than he had before. And with most of his face covered by fingers with a little yellow slime oozing between them.

Luís stepped out of the way, then looked down as his heel bumped something: Iker had gone back to fox-form. He gazed back at Luís, then took a couple steps to the left, towards the tissue-box on the table. Then he stopped and watched Sandro stomp on by, straight for Zlatan. His tail went down first, and then he sat his haunches down rather firmly, ears perked up in curiosity.

“Yeah, well, if you were worried about freshness, then you sure took your _time_ making sure it’d get here while it was still ripe. Oh, wait, it’s not fruit,” Zlatan snorted. He’d turned back around, and appeared to be studiously working away at the papers.

“Excuse me for caring about quality and wanting to make sure that it was actually from a black cow, so your friend wouldn’t—” _sneeze_ “—trouble with—”

Sneeze plus a long, wet snuffle. As Luís shut the door and got the tissues, Sandro finally subsided into an awful little _snork_ into his hand, his eyes closing with the force of his effort. Though it didn’t seem to help clear his nose much, and when Luís handed over the tissues, Sandro actually looked grateful. He even muttered a thank-you, which made Zlatan look up, blink, and then sit back to stare in no little confusion.

“So aren’t you coming?” Sandro mumbled. He made some probably unintentionally amusing faces as he delicately wiped and dabbed the snot off his fingers. “Why are you still sitting there?”

“I have to finish this for Figo. I’ll come back when I’m done.” It took two nudges at his head to get Zlatan to take the tissue-box, and even then he just put up a hand a good ten centimeters away. So Luís just dropped it into his lap. “What, don’t tell me you’re waiting on me.”

Sandro answered that with another blast at his now very soggy tissue. Then he lifted his head to look condescendingly at Zlatan, who—admirably, Luís had to give him—ruined that by waving a couple fresh tissues in Sandro’s face. For a moment Sandro actually seemed conflicted about accepting them, but then his sheer revulsion at his misfunctioning nose overcame his pride and he reluctantly took them. “You couldn’t have mentioned this _before_ I came over? Or to Paolo? You know he’s—”

The bottom of the paper bag was beginning to feel a little damp and Luís did need to get it up to the kitchen, but…well, he always had to deal with the aftermath, and rarely got to see how these actually started. And it was a little difficult trying to figure out what had really happened from Zlatan’s version of events; Zlatan was surprisingly truthful for a demon, but he still was unrepentantly defensive of himself.

“He does not go to bed anywhere this early, and I’ll be done before then, okay? Stop trying to guilt me, especially when you look like somebody installed a fountain in your nose.” Zlatan clearly wanted to go on, but his curiosity for once managed to work to his benefit. “Wait…do you have a cold? You’re not supposed to get those.”

“I _know_ ,” Sandro said, miserable and irritated and for some reason offended. But mostly miserable. It was…it actually reminded Luís of Zlatan, how quickly Sandro went from demanding all the attention in the room to getting it just because he looked so pitiful. “And I got it while running your errand—”

“—Gila’s, damn it—”

“—and I can’t get rid of it till I get back, and I can’t do that because this—this stuff in my nose is throwing me off. I can’t—” gesturing “—and I need a car, or…”

For a moment Zlatan tried. He really, honestly did, and by now Luís could tell when he was just half-assing it just by the way Zlatan held his head. But he couldn’t do it, and even though Sandro’s glower actually was intensified by the raw red tinge to the end of his nose, Zlatan broke into snickers. “Oh. _Oh_. So you can’t fight past a piddly little cold to magic yourself back, and you what, forgot your wallet for bus fare? Well, look, I’ve got to do this for Figo and I’m not leaving till it’s done. Then I’ll take us back.”

Sandro opened his mouth…and sneezed. So hard that his head jerked down enough to send his hair flying up about him like a black halo. He scrunched his wad of tissues against his nose, eyes pinched shut, making noisy sniffles.

Zlatan put the tissue box up on the arm of the couch, paused, and then offered it to Sandro. This time, Sandro took the box, and then was going to comment when Zlatan kept on going, actually getting off the couch to drag over a wastebasket. Then he sat back down and picked up his pen.

“Look, this is serious trouble we’re talking about. I need to help Luís—I did tell Paolo that, all right? Just…have a seat or something. Don’t get pissy and maybe I’ll finish early,” Zlatan said under his breath.

“I don’t even know what’s going on. Paolo told me you needed this and then the wards fritzed so he had to stay and fix them.” After tossing his used tissues in the wastebasket, Sandro gingerly sat down on the couch. He stayed put, faintly ridiculous in his stiffness, as Zlatan began to sprawl out the way he always did when settling in for a long while. “And whatever you did in the sewers, you didn’t do it right. I walked into a stray thread of magic from that and that gave me the cold.”

Zlatan looked at him, then let out a long sigh as he reached behind himself and dug at the back of the couch, trying to get the blanket thrown over it untucked from the cushions. “What did I say about not whining? And…and—well, Figo kind of got married.”

“ _Affianced_ ,” Luís corrected. He was less amused than he should’ve been at the two of them jerking about, since he’d just gotten reminded himself of why he was standing there, watching the pair of them be hopelessly immature. “I’m already married.”

“Huh?” As Zlatan turned around, he naturally pulled his arm forward, and with it, the blanket. It took him a moment to understand why Sandro was suddenly hissing at him and trying to bat through the cloth; Zlatan blinked, grinned and just threw the loose end over Sandro’s head. Then he turned the rest of the way to look confusedly at Luís. “What? Since when—wait, Helen? I thought that was just a seasonal thing.”

Luís…reminded himself he needed the contents of the definitely-soggy bag in his hand, and consequently couldn’t waste it by throwing it at Zlatan’s oblivious head. “It is. Because she’s a swan-maiden, and they only leave the northern forests once a year. But it’s still a marriage. Hence why I always take a vacation when she migrates.”

“Yeah, but…fox-demons.” Zlatan vaguely waved a hand, and from various parts of the room came indignant little sniffing noises. Which made Zlatan pause before he went back to being annoyed. “Everywhere.”

“She thinks they’re adorable,” Luís said. “Zlatan. She’s not Catholic, or even human. Stop thinking it works like that.”

“Okay, okay. But then…well, why are you so worked up about this? I thought it was because you didn’t want to be tied down like that.” Then Zlatan’s brow furrowed. “Well, I guess if you’re hooked up with some wrinkled old bastard like the Dukes, that wouldn’t be all that great…”

Sandro, who’d finally managed to get the blanket off his head, looked at Zlatan like he was an idiot. Then he hit Zlatan on the head. “ _Maybe_ he doesn’t like the idea of being forced into something that binding against his will. Since generally demons don’t let death get in the way of that sort of thing.”

“Hey, I do _not_ need you to tell me how my own kind works—shit, Figo, seriously? You can’t get out of this even when you’re dead? That’s…” Zlatan shook his head, then glanced down at his hand. Then he looked again, and then his head shot up. “Then why the fuck am I translating this? What’s the point?”

“Because I’m affianced because that damn thing was in the book I bought, and once you get it translated, I can use it to figure out _who_ I’m actually affianced to. Zlatan, I explained this to you while you were arguing with Gianluigi. Weren’t you—” Luís stopped there, since he’d just answered himself. And he might be a little more frazzled than he’d thought. “All right? Does everybody understand now? Okay, good. Now you can go back to your bickering.”

Zlatan and Sandro stared at him, looking a bit taken aback. Possibly Luís had raised his voice a bit, but he didn’t remember getting that loud. Or—had he shocked somebody again? He looked down, then around, but didn’t see any puffed-out foxes. On the other hand, Iker seemed to have disappeared, so he couldn’t be too sure. He might have to apologize later for that, too…but right now, Luís needed to calm down. Calm down. If only because he seemed to be the only one thinking somewhat straight, and somebody had to do that if he was going to get through this mess.

“Okay,” Zlatan said, a little quiet. Beside him, Sandro appeared to be shrinking—and then Sandro sneezed and his head went down.

When it came back up, he’d sunk to his nose, and then he pulled the blanket up over that to just below his eyes. He’d been gradually tipping towards Zlatan as well and now Zlatan noticed, first trying to twist even further around and then just turning forward and then the other way to frown at Sandro. Whose head was definitely lying on Zlatan’s shoulder at this point: it shuddered slightly with another sneeze, then settled back as Zlatan’s lips twitched.

“Paolo said if you needed anything else, you can just call him or me directly instead of asking Gila to get it,” Sandro said, voice heavily muffled. He didn’t turn around, but his voice dropped even more and also got sharper for his next comment. “I suppose I can wait.”

“Stop talking, then. I’m trying to work here,” Zlatan snapped. Not nearly as nastily as he could’ve.

Well, great. Those two were settled and probably weren’t going to wreck the room, and possibly Luís could just forget about them while he dealt with his own life. He turned around and headed for the door.

“Are you _snuggling_?” came from behind him, the incredulous tone making Luís’ mouth twitch in spite of himself.

Sniffle. “I’m cold. You’re not. Now shut up and work already.”

Luís gave up and laughed under his breath. All right, things weren’t looking too good for him, but doom just wasn’t his style. He enjoyed life too much, even when it was ridiculous and petty and irritating. Maybe especially then.

* * *

“Okay.” Zlatan stood back, tilted his head, and then nodded in approval. He folded his arms over his chest. “There you go.”

For a moment they all looked at it. Then Luís looked down just as he was lifting his hand and was reminded that he was holding a metal bowl just in time to avoid smashing that into his face. Instead he stared into it, looking at the distorted reflection of himself in the steel and then at the chopped-up entrails. Embedded in the middle of all that was a cow’s eye, and—Luís blinked as the eye seemed to roll to look back at him. Then he frowned and scuffed at the floor till a very huffy Cesc popped up; the fox-demon hit Luís’ ankle with a paw, then scrambled up onto Luís’ shoulder to stare properly instead of using the cow’s eye to do it.

Sandro’s cold appeared to have gone away, but he still was rubbing at his raw-looking nose, his eyebrows scrunched down as if he was trying to will something out of his head. Possibly the last remnants of his commonsense, since obviously it was a lost battle and he might as well avoid the suffering of knowing how ridiculous it was. “I just want to say that I didn’t think it was a good idea, but he said you wouldn’t mind.”

“You did not. Unless that was what you were mumbling when you were _groping_ me.”

“I was trying to get the _blanket_ back, you overgrown hellspawn. You were sitting on the corner.”

“ _Hey_. There are only a couple people and demons who get to call me ‘overgrown,’ and you’re not one of them. Not when you have those abnormally cold feet that you’re always sticking into my—”

Luís cleared his throat. He waited for Sandro and Zlatan to sputter to a stop, look vaguely sheepish about being caught in another quarrel, and then adjust the blanket bundled about his waist and scratch his hair, respectively. Then he gestured to the wall. “Zlatan. What…what is that?”

“It’s the translation,” Zlatan said. He stopped whatever else he’d been going to add, then hunched his shoulders and nervously pulled at the back of his neck. “It’s a lot easier to read this way, isn’t it? I got tired of trying to fit it on sheets of paper, and anyway, those damn foxes kept poking their muzzles up from the floor so the tape would tear.”

Cesc’s tail thumped against Luís’ back, and his little paws kneaded at Luís’ shoulder as he struggled for balance. “It looks like you let Sandro throw up all over the wall.”

“It does not—look, that color ink was the only color I could find! You wanna criticize so much, then maybe you should—” Then Zlatan blinked, surprised, and made a belated grab for Sandro. He dragged the angel back, blocked an elbow going for his ribs, and then pulled at Sandro’s arm till the angel had to look at him. “Okay, first you insult me and then you try to kill the stupid fox. I don’t think so. I get first dibs on that furball.”

“I wasn’t—I was not going to do anything as idiotic as resort to violence,” Sandro snorted, twisting his wrist. When Zlatan released that, Sandro immediately stepped back and cradled his arm against his chest, chin up. “I was just going to tell him that angels would be…be far more artistic.”

Zlatan stared at him. To his credit, Sandro seemed to realize he’d jumped into a spat before his brain had fully shaken off his cold; he flushed, then pulled his arms more tightly to his sides, as if trying to make himself so narrow that he could no longer be seen. Then he jerked up his head and glowered at Cesc, who was sniggering in Luís’ ear.

Luís shifted the bowl to one hand, then shoved up his other hand and grabbed Cesc’s muzzle before the little pest could dart away. Cesc’s lips vibrated mightily against his palm, and then the fox-demon tried to jerk free, but only succeeded in unbalancing himself so Luís could drag him down and stuff him under an arm one-handed. “Well, it wasn’t really what I had in mind, Ibra, but if you’re done…”

“Look, it’s a family tree anyway, and they’re all demons so it wasn’t really like I _could_ do it on paper. I mean—” Zlatan flicked his fingers and the mass of spidery lines on the wall suddenly glowed, then appeared to pull _off_ the wall in places so it was clear that they actually didn’t include certain points in between. And…and Zlatan grinned at the face Luís made. “Yeah, like I said. How else am I supposed to write down a couple hooking up when they’re four generations apart in the same branch?”

“I think he’s making that face more because he’s realizing what his relations by marriage are going to be like,” Sandro muttered.

He had a point, and so did Zlatan. And frankly, Luís just didn’t care right now. His amusement from earlier had long since evaporated and he couldn’t quite seem to find it again, and moreover, couldn’t work up the energy to do it. Not when he was staring the reality of this engagement in the face and really, truly not seeing the humor in that.

So Luís tossed Cesc at Sandro’s knees. Sandro started back, but wasted a moment glancing in surprise at Luís when he would’ve done better to keep jumping; thankfully, Cesc seemed to get the point and just bit at the blanket Sandro had wrapped about him. He got a good hold on it, but his weight alone wasn’t quite enough to drag the blanket off—and then Sandro snatched it back as it began to slip. Cesc switched to clinging by his claws and yipped for back-up.

As several furry bodies converged on the angel, Luís gestured to Zlatan to step aside. Which Zlatan did, grinning widely for several seconds before he actually looked at Luís. Then he sobered, pushing one hand into his hand and then dropping it to jam in his pocket. “It shouldn’t ruin your wall for good or anything. I’ll take it off when you figure it…I mean, you can tell who it is now, right?”

“Not really. That’s what this is for,” Luís said, nodding to the bowl. “I do this spell, then use that as a reference and I should know. But I don’t need you for the spell part, so you can get back so Paolo can sleep.”

“What—oh. Yeah…you know, I still don’t know why he has that problem. It’s not like he can’t take care of himself when we’re not there…but whatever. Sandro’s been getting twitchy anyway.” Zlatan briefly looked up over Luís’ shoulder, then ducked his head to smile. Then he raised his eyes again to Luís, serious once more. “So what are you doing once you know who it is? Because I recognized some of those names, and…they’re not the worst you could do, I guess. But…”

Luís almost turned to the wall, but managed to stop himself before he got terminally distracted. Though he did make a note to carefully examine the whole thing later; Zlatan’s idea of ‘the worst’ tended to be idiosyncratic at the best of times, and since he’d settled in with Paolo and Sandro, it’d gotten even more…well, Zlatan’s priorities were interesting. “I can’t really say till I know who I’m dealing with. Honestly. Look, go home, put some lotion on Sandro’s nose, put Paolo to bed, do whatever else it is you do at night. I’ll call you tomorrow morning, all right?”

“Lotion? Nose?” Zlatan said, blinking and pulling an incredulous face. He looked over Luís’ shoulder again—the yipping had died down, but Sandro was still stomping around muttering—then back at Luís. His hand came up to about shoulder-level, then went down. Then it rose again and went around to scratch at the back of his head. “Okay. If you really don’t need me…it’s just if I go, I don’t want to be running back in the middle of the night. I’ve done enough of that this month because of all those stupid wine-dinners—and what’s with that? It’s like people _like_ you two drunk.”

That, apparently, was to Sandro, who tossed back something about maintaining good business relations and social etiquette as his stomping redirected itself towards the door. Zlatan started to retort, but then cut himself off in favor of gazing uncertainly at Luís again.

“Ibra, I swear on my mother’s grave that I won’t need you and therefore will not call you till tomorrow morning. If there’s trouble that bad, then I’d be banging on your door anyway and wouldn’t waste the phone minutes. All right?” Luís waited a moment, then clapped his hand on Zlatan’s shoulder. Then he gave that a little shake and Zlatan shrugged out of the hold, then reluctantly nodded. “And yes, lotion on the nose. Trust me. You don’t want him going to bed with his nose like that. His misery will spread like a rash.”

“He _is_ a rash sometimes,” Zlatan muttered, but he looked like he was at least thinking about it. Good, because for once Luís didn’t need to be worrying about demons showing up in the middle of the night to ask him why having a relationship was so annoying and complicated and _hard_. 

Sometimes, Luís thought as he nudged Zlatan out the door, he really thought he should drag Henrik up more often. It wasn’t like he’d ever actually signed anything or made any agreements to take over Zlatan’s upbringing, and nowadays Henrik didn’t come round often enough for Luís to even remotely be doing it for him. Which was really a pity, actually. Luís missed the calm, mature conversation. Among other things.

“Okay! We gonna do magic now?”

Luís paused with his hand still on the door-bolt. Then he looked down, and on the floor Cesc guiltily stopped his bouncing, tail drooping between his legs. A moment later, the human version was trailing after Luís as they went back across the room, rubbing at his furry ears.

“Um, I mean, are we going to solve your problem now? So life will be back to normal and nobody needs to worry and—”

“You’re pushing it,” Luís sighed. Though he handed the bowl over to Cesc anyway, then paused by the couch to frown at the little tears in his blanket. Then he shrugged that off for later and went on into the hallway. “Is Raúl back yet?”

Cesc absently sniffed the entrails in the bowl, then wrinkled up his nose and stuck out his tongue. “He should be. Why, do we need to wait for him? I thought he was just getting that message to your…um, your wife.” Pause. “So…you think she’ll be okay with this?”

“Not really, but I’ve got another nine months before she’s here to figure out how to apologize.” It wouldn’t be so much the attachment as the formalization of it that Luís would have to explain. And hopefully in a month Helen would be able to appreciate that Luís wasn’t any happier than she was about the new development than she was.

He’d had a very nice life. Helen in the winter, foxes year-round, Henrik when he wanted to do some book-trading and wasn’t succumbing to Freddie’s bitchiness. A business that made him enough money so people weren’t suspicious and that he actually enjoyed running. Zlatan for whenever he was genuinely bored—and for a lot of times when he wasn’t, but as frustrating as the demon could be, Luís did care about him. Him and his fallen angels who apparently couldn’t understand that Luís’ apartment was neither for the fight nor for the make-up sex afterward, and the fact that the fox-demons always cheered on both didn’t mean a damn thing since they weren’t the property-owners.

And now…Luís sighed again as he went into his study, which had been temporarily emptied of everything so he could use the floor space. He looked at the bare walls, the old scorches and scrapes on them, and wondered if this was the beginning of the end.

“Would it…” Cesc edged through the door, hesitant for once “…you think it’d help if we talked to her? I mean, Mori was there and can tell her what a dickhead that bookseller was. He totally hustled you.”

On the other hand, it wasn’t like Luís was used to a _stable_ life. He just very much wanted to preserve certain current elements, and he wasn’t going to do that by standing here and brooding. Shaking his head, he took the bowl back from Cesc and then squatted down beside the chalk circle drawn on the floor. “Cesc, he acted like a good salesman would. I got overexcited for once and didn’t do all the provenance work that I should’ve. Anyway, if I’m going to mess up I’d rather it be because of inattention than because after years in the damn business, I still can’t pick out a soap-seller when I see one.”

“Oh.” Shuffling feet. When Luís looked over his shoulder, Cesc’s ears were half-over and the fox-demon was looking decidedly uncomfortable.

Luís dug around in his pocket till he came up with a cigarette lighter. He flicked it on, then started lighting the candles set around the rim of the circle. “Cesc. Did you eat him?”

“No! Of course not! I’ve been here the whole day!” Cesc indignantly sputtered. He added an offended sniff for good measure before he grabbed the bowl and bounded into the center of the circle to pour out its contents there. Then he glanced at Luís and his ears drooped again. “Well, look, we’re all pretty upset. Helen doesn’t mind us, but we’ve got no idea about these demons and we’re not going to give you up just because some dumb horned jerk says so.”

“So who did eat him? Who’s…Fernando?” Come to think of it, Luís hadn’t seen the wolf-demon around in a while.

Cesc’s annoyed stance stiffened a bit. Then he ducked his head, poking distractedly with a finger at the entrails. “Er…no? I mean, I’m pretty sure the guy’s still alive…and maybe can still have kids…if he’s got a really good doctor…”

Luís clicked off the lighter so he could put one hand over his face. “For the love of God, does it look like I need a homicide on my—”

“I didn’t _eat_ him. People taste awful, and anyway, eating them is what Ibra does.” Morientes sauntered in, gave Cesc an uncharacteristically severe glare, and then dropped down besides Luís. He briefly went to wolf-form so he could stretch and crack his back, then rolled over as a human, his fingertips just grazing Luís’ foot. “I just had a discussion about him giving you a refund.”

“Oh. Oh, well, that might actually be—Cesc!” Luís snapped. “Don’t eat _that_. I need it for the spell, damn it.”

“I’m not! I was just licking my finger clean,” Cesc protested. Though he scurried out of the circle with telling haste, and then his rude tail-flick in Mori’s snickering face wasn’t convincing to anyone. He made a face at the wolf-demon before turning to Luís, his expression going to faintly pleading. “Really…”

Luís leaned away, and then arched an eyebrow at Cesc’s hurt face. “Even so, I’d rather you didn’t prod at cattle guts. Especially if you’re going to snuggle afterward.”

“You humans and your stupid disinfectants. Like just getting rid of the germs makes you _clean_.” Cesc jerked back his hand and cradled it against his chest. Then he swiveled on his feet, and a second later was irritably swishing his tail as he scampered out the door on all fours.

Fernando laughed after the other demon, then let his head fall back while still chuckling. He turned over again, so he was facing Luís again, and the smile stayed but the eyes lost their softening good humor. He watched for a few moments, the corners of his mouth occasionally twitching, before he rose with liquid suddenness and gently bumped his head against Luís’ side. “I saw the translation on the wall. Haven’t looked over all of it, but no names jumped out that I couldn’t eat.”

“You mean singly, or taken together?” Luís asked. He lit the last candle, then lifted his arm up over Mori’s head to jam the lighter back into his pocket. “Nobody’s starting a war on my behalf. If I want that, I’m old enough and know enough to do that myself.”

“Yeah, of course. But—damn it, ninety percent of demons can’t even tell you who they’re related to without trying to kill you. If it’d been one of them, probably we could’ve talked a relative into taking care of them for you. But no, it has to be one of the clans.” Still grumbling, Fernando flopped over as a wolf, then let his muzzle thump against the ground. He stared straight ahead of himself, his upper lip slightly pulled back from his teeth.

Well, on a morbidly flattering level it was nice to know that Luís hadn’t made a garden-variety mistake. And also, he supposed, that the legendary flightiness of the lupine demons wasn’t actually that true, and they really were all scouring their brains for ideas. “They might still prove to be reasonable. I can’t think of why a demon with a clan would want to be tied down to a human—there are responsibilities on their side as well as mine.”

Mori twisted his head to look with one eye at Luís, then closed that eye and whuffed so his nostrils flared. He was a good deal better-connected than his habit of sleeping where everyone would trip over him would suggest, so if he didn’t think it was likely, then it probably wasn’t. Good thing Luís had sent Zlatan home in that case, since Zlatan had plenty of old enemies without adding Luís’ future in-laws to the list.

Luís looked at the floor, then rolled his shoulders and curled back his fingers till he felt the knuckles popped. He concentrated till a soft glow appeared around his hand, then carefully reached towards the chalk lines.

Something whammed down so the floorboards rattled, making Luís snatch back his hand before he accidentally triggered the wrong part of the spell. He looked at Mori, but the wolf-demon was still lying where he’d been before, far away from anything that could’ve possibly made that much noise. Though Fernando’s head was up and his ears pricked forward; he stared at the door, one foreleg beginning to curl beneath himself, and then was about to get up when they both heard the snarling.

“Oh, for—” A glance at the spell, and then Luís gritted his teeth and got up. Those cow guts were going to spoil too much to be useful in another half-hour, but there was no way he could get through the spell when some dogfight was going on in the background.

Foxfight, Luís corrected as Fernando abruptly leaped up and then ran out ahead of him. For a moment Luís considered letting him deal with it—normally that was what Luís did, since he preferred not to meddle when he didn’t have to—but then he heard a crash and over that racket, a splattering noise. As in blood hitting something.

By the time Luís got out to his front room, Mori had managed to break it up, but that was about it. One of the chairs was on its side, a chunk had been knocked out of a very expensive, rare footstool, and fox-demons were all over the place, barking so Luís couldn’t hear himself think. “ _Shut up_.”

When added together, the sound of tens of little jaws clacking shut was deafening all by itself, but then it was quiet. Luís exhaled, pushed at his temple in advance of the coming headache, and then picked his way through the mess. Fernando was human again and on the floor, holding a wad of tissues to some—to Raúl’s cut eyebrow, and Raúl was glowering past him to…David Villa? Who was leaning against the opposite wall, scrubbing blood into that clump of hair beneath his bottom lip while Silva anxiously tried to grab that hand so he could check out Villa’s busted knuckles.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Cesc came jumping in out of nowhere, so agitated that he hadn’t noticed one ear was human and one was fox. His head swiveled between Villa and Raúl so quickly that Luís found himself wondering if it was going to spin completely off. “Damn it, David, Luís is _engaged_ and we still don’t know who to. Can’t you just save it for when we aren’t in deep trouble?”

“Stay out of this, Cesc,” Villa snapped. “You don’t even know anything about it.”

“Guaje—David, that’s not fair to Cesc—”

Villa didn’t bother to look at Silva as he yanked away his hand. He stepped away from the wall, eyebrows up and gaze firmly on Fernando. Who was muttering to Raúl and trying to keep him down as Raúl shoved at Fernando’s shoulder, eying Villa in a way that was borderline murderous. For him, given that Raúl generally seemed to feel about the shenanigans of his tribe the way Luís did about Zlatan’s angelic sex life.

“What’s going on?” Luís asked.

Cesc and Fernando looked at him, but Villa was still busy curling his lip, and Raúl had subsided under an apparent dizzy spell, gingerly trying to touch his cut head and missing the spot on the first try. On the second one he got it and winced; Fernando glanced back at him and Villa threw up his hands and abruptly whipped about—and then a shadow was flowing beneath the door. Silva had had a shocked face since Villa had ripped his hand free, but now he sprang for the door and ripped that open. He ran out and Cesc took a couple steps after him before slowing to collapse against the door-jamb, one hand over his face so Luís could just see his grimacing mouth.

“Damn it.” Still with his hand clapped over his brow, Raúl pushed at Fernando’s arm. This time the other demon let him get up, and Raúl wasted no time twisting out from under Mori and then rolling onto his feet. He swayed a moment before his balance adjusted, then edged forward just as Silva came dragging back into the room, head hanging and shoulders slumped. Raúl hesitated, then cleared his throat. “David. It wasn’t you—”

“I _know_.” David’s head came up and for a moment it looked like he might hit Raúl—who didn’t back up, Luís noted—but then he just dropped.

So fast that Luís flinched, but then he saw the furry tail disappearing behind a bookshelf and he relaxed. He took a deep breath, then looked up at the door, but Cesc was already getting that. In a manner of speaking: he slammed the door so hard that it bounced open again, but Cesc didn’t notice because he was stalking towards Fernando and glaring so hard that Mori’s hands twitched upwards.

“This is all your fault, you stupid wolf. If you weren’t napping all the time—” Cesc shook his head, swerving just in time to avoid walking straight into Fernando.

His shoulder still hit Mori’s arm, and then he kept going as Fernando jerked back, teeth a little long, and then went after him, demanding an explanation. So then Luís started after them, but a cough called him back.

“No, let Cesc—let them work it out. Mori’s not going to hurt Cesc, and Cesc can’t hurt Fernando,” Raúl said. He squeezed his eyes shut, then took down his bloody hand and cracked open one eye to look at that. Then he grimaced and put his hand back when he realized the cut hadn’t scabbed over yet. “Did you—”

“I was just about to when I heard the fighting.” Luís walked over and shut the door, then came back to take Raúl by the arm. While the demon apologized, he pulled Raúl into the hall and, after a quick stop in the bathroom for a first-aid kit, back into his study. Then he made Raúl sit so he could stop the blood before it got on the floor and interfered with the spellwork. “So what the hell was that about?”

Raúl paused mid-apology, blinked, and then looked as if he’d rather get punched again than talk about it. Then he winced as Luís smeared some herbal paste over the cut. “You…have you noticed any of it?”

“Any of what? For the past couple months I’ve been giving Zlatan advice on how to use pushy angels to your advantage and trying to keep Alberto from flipping out. Was I supposed to notice something?” Luís snapped. Which was probably a little nastier than he needed to be, but seriously. He couldn’t even keep track of what foxes ended up in his bed: the ones who curled down with him weren’t the ones with whom he woke up, and then on top of that he’d gotten up in the middle of the night to use the toilet, and come back to an entirely different set hogging the blankets. And he was supposed to know what was going on with all of them? “Just…look. Is this a huge problem?”

“It—it’s difficult. I’m sorry, it shouldn’t even be something in your house, but…ow.” Then Raúl frowned. “Luís. Was…that on purpose?”

Luís finished dabbing the paste over Raúl’s eyebrow, then sat back so he could wipe his hands on some spare bandages. He shrugged, and when Raúl sighed, couldn’t help a snort. “In case you haven’t noticed, excessive apologizing annoys me even _more_.”

Raúl almost made a face, but then gave up and let a smile twitch at his mouth. But then his shoulders sank again and he put up a hand to rub at the uninjured side of face. “It’s just Villa’s gone and gotten a crush on Mori. When we were in Hell, Villa lived pretty far from me, so they didn’t see much of each other, but because they’ve had the watch on Gianluigi together…and David and I don’t really get along anyway.”

“And Mori hasn’t picked up on it, I take it,” Luís muttered. He handed Raúl a gauze pad to wipe off the paste, then began to peel a butterfly bandage from its wrapper. “So…”

“So I came back from sending your message—Helen should get it around noon tomorrow, by the way—and David was asking me how could I send Fernando off to mess with that bookseller, when I don’t know what he could do to Fernando, or to you. Except I don’t know what he was talking about,” Raúl said. His lips pulled back a bit as he carefully worked the last of the paste from the cut, which had finally stopped bleeding. Then he licked a finger and wiped it across the cut as well. “Did Cesc talk Mori into something?”

“I don’t—” Luís glanced at the spell-circle beside them “—I don’t know. Look, can you keep all that away from me for a half-hour so I can do this? Then I’ll see if—”

Raúl almost immediately withdrew his hand from Luís’ wrist, his gaze dropping. Then he put his hand back, his fingers curling loosely around the joint as Luís leaned forward to position the first butterfly bandage across Raúl’s cut. His fox-ears came out but stayed flattened against his hair, so they were almost invisible. “Luís, you don’t even need to get into it anyway. It’s not your problem. Except Villa owes you an apology for the footstool, but I think you’ll get that when he calms down. He doesn’t have a problem with you.”

It was a nice, convenient out, and it even had commonsense behind it. And…Luís just stretched the next bandage over the cut. “Except one, I’ll have a lot of little mopey foxes hanging about the place, and two, _I_ might have a problem with Villa for hitting you.”

“It was mostly him surprising me,” Raúl said after a moment, blinking. But his ears had suddenly lifted, and when Luís smoothed his thumb over the butterfly strip, Raúl turned his head so Luís’ palm ended up curving against his cheek. “Luís. You need to do that spell and sort out your engagement.”

“Don’t remind me. I’m the responsible one.” Luís slid his hand further back till it was over Raúl’s right ear, then slowly rubbed his thumb over that while Raúl’s lashes fluttered. He still didn’t understand why Alberto had some sort of uncontrollable urge to twiddle the things, but he could agree that fox ears were very soft. And they were useful when one wanted a fox-demon to be too distracted to do anything but tip into the touch.

Raúl turned further, till his mouth was pressing into Luís’ wrist. His eyes were fully closed now, and little rumbling noises were coming from his throat. His hands were clenching at his knees, and when Luís caught the ear-tip between forefinger and thumb to tease it, one shot up to grab Luís; arm and hold it still as Raúl sucked hard at the side of Luís’ wrist. The other hand slid onto Luís’ knee, then higher up.

“Luís…” Raúl breathed. He tilted his head back a bit so Luís could see the demon’s eyes had slitted open again, then openly licked at the underside of Luís’ wrist. “You’re procrastinating…”

“I—” Luís began to pull his arm away, annoyed, but Raúl just went with the tug and so suddenly Luís had a fox-demon expertly nuzzling at his neck. He grabbed at Raúl’s ear, but missed and instead got a handful of thick black hair. “And I can’t do that for once in my life?”

“Didn’t say that,” Raúl mumbled, sucking his way up to Luís’ jaw. He ran the heel of his hand along the inside of Luís’ thigh. “I think we’ve got fifteen minutes before those cow entrails aren’t any good.”

Fifteen. That was very much doable, and it wouldn’t even be pushing the limit. Luís shoved Raúl over.

The door spells pinged.

For a few seconds Luís and Raúl stared at each other. Luís didn’t know what his own expression looked like, but he guessed it wasn’t too far off the startled irritation on Raúl’s. And then they both stopped thinking like desperate teenagers and realized that the spells only pinged for strange non-humans. Which, at this hour and with the way Luís’ life currently was situated, was not really a great sign.

About two minutes later, Luís slowly levered the front door open with the end of his shotgun. He stopped with it only a few centimeters away from the frame, waited, and then let it swing the rest of the way.

Manlike. Deceptively casual, actually, with the jeans, the white buttondown shirt with the top two buttons undone and the rolled-up sleeves. When it was still chilly enough out to produce frost in the morning. Also, no subtle heavenly smell came blowing inside, so…

“Zinedine,” the demon said. He didn’t take his hands out of his pockets, and spent longer looking at the shotgun Luís had pointing at his chest than at Luís. Or at Raúl, who was lurking in the background but still should’ve been within the demon’s line of sight. “I’m here to evaluate you.”

Luís hitched up the shotgun a bit, and shrugged when Zinedine’s eyebrows rose. “Forgive me for being cautious, but I don’t remember scheduling any such…”

“You’re marrying into my clan. I’m here to see what we’re getting,” Zinedine said, tone going flat. His eyes narrowed, and the shadows behind him shifted so for a moment, it looked like he had gigantic wings sweeping darkly from each shoulder. “Do you remember now?”

Should’ve finished fucking Raúl, Luís sourly thought. He deliberately paused before stepping back, and didn’t bother shrugging this time when Zinedine glanced at the shotgun again. “It’s nice to meet somebody from my new family,” he muttered.

Zinedine flicked a cold look at Luís as he strode over the threshold. “We’ll see about that…name?”

“Figo,” Luís said. He reluctantly closed the door.

* * *

Alberto gasped and jerked up on his elbows. Or tried to jerk, but something was weighing down his chest—and his legs, and his—

“What? What’s wrong?” Gianluigi stared up at Alberto, hair flopped into his wide eyes.

“Um.” They were…on the bed, and Gianluigi was lying mostly on Alberto, so that was why Alberto couldn’t move. And the room looked normal and everything: balcony doors shut, snail terrarium on the desk…TV still on, and God, Alberto felt like an idiot. He put his head back down, but then realized Gianluigi was still staring anxiously at him and pushed back up on one arm. “Oh, nothing. Sorry. I just—somebody got shot on TV, and it woke me up. I didn’t…sorry, I just woke you, didn’t I?”

Instead of answering, Gianluigi shifted to get up one arm and push the hair out of his eyes. Then he rubbed at them, pushing his fingers hard into the corners closest to his nose. “I didn’t think the show was that interesting. Sorry.”

“Oh, no, nah…it was a lot worse than I thought it’d be. I mean, it’s not like you expect a lot with these, but this one was still pretty bad. I don’t understand why Alice likes it so much,” Alberto said. His arm was starting to get tired, so he twisted about and plumped up the pillow so it’d hold him up. Then he turned back, only to find Gianluigi uncertainly climbing off him; Alberto grabbed at Gianluigi’s arm without thinking, did actually think, and then shook his head. “I can turn it off if you just want to sleep.”

“I can sleep through it if you want to watch something else,” Gianluigi said after a moment. He looked relieved as he put his head back on Alberto’s chest, and after another pause, let his hand rest on Alberto’s stomach.

Alberto looked at the top of Gianluigi’s head, swallowing a sudden tightening in his throat, and then reached for the remote on the side-table. He absently hefted that in his hand a few times, thinking, before turning off the TV. “I don’t think there’s going to be anything better on. Anyway, I need to go to sleep. Tomorrow night’s booked for a private party and I’m probably not going to be back till late.”

Gianluigi didn’t say anything, but his hand half-curled, then slowly spread out again. Then he moved his head, settling it more in the scoop of Alberto’s shoulder, as a little low breath came from him. Which abruptly cut off when Alberto touched his head, and then began again, even lower and more drawn-out, when Alberto carefully sifted his fingers into Gianluigi’s thick locks.

“What’d you think of the movie?” Alberto asked. He let his fingers lie where they were for a few seconds before he tried drawing them downward, till the side of his thumb was resting against the back of Gianluigi’s neck.

“Hmmm?” The hand over Alberto’s belly absently flexed, and then Gianluigi frowned, his eyes half-closed. “Oh. It…was very beautiful, and I think the cooking…” he glanced up at Alberto “…the kitchen, that all seemed accurate enough. But the rat-demons were nothing like the real thing.”

Alberto paused, not understanding that. Then he did, but his first reaction was to laugh and somehow he didn’t think that that was right, given the close way Gianluigi was watching him. So instead he busied himself with tossing the remote back on the table, and then he thought he could talk without giving himself away. “Um, Gigi, they weren’t demons. They were just rats who could…could talk. It’s a cartoon, so it’s…a lot of it is made-up and isn’t supposed to be realistic.”

Gianluigi looked up at Alberto, then ducked his head just as he started to grimace. He tended to do that when he thought he’d made a mistake—Alberto petted at his ear and Gianluigi slowly raised his head again. Then he shrugged and put his head down, so his hair was just brushing the edge of Alberto’s jaw. “Oh.”

“But…wait, so there are rat-demons? Are they around here? Because that would explain this one restaurant closing I heard about,” Alberto hastily said. He started to pull himself up again, but then realized he was doing that by grabbing at Gianluigi’s hair and immediately let go. Which made him fall back onto the mattress so his knees went up to keep his balance, only one of them hit something soft.

A grunt came from Gianluigi, who’d been ducking down while putting up a hand to his head. He went very still, half-lifted off Alberto, and then he slowly slid off to the side, rubbing at his head. Which he kept down as if he were looking at something, and also his other arm was moving around by their legs, right about the spot Alberto had just…kneed.

“Shit. I’m so sorry, I’m just a hopeless spazz…are you okay? Did I hit you really hard?” Alberto reached for Gianluigi, then yanked back his hands, afraid he was going to make things worse. But then he didn’t know what to do with his hands, and he knew that usually wasn’t a great set-up for avoiding trouble so he jammed them down on the mattress.

Gianluigi was still curled over, pushing at his head, and when Alberto hesitantly tapped his shoulder, the angel didn’t react. It didn’t look like Gianluigi was too badly hurt, but the not-talking was a little worrying—and Alberto’s hands had already left the bed again. Alberto gave them a disgusted look, then gave up and just tried not to accidentally poke an eye or an ear as he carefully put his hands around Gianluigi’s head. He paused to see how Gianluigi would take it, and when Gianluigi slightly tipped his head towards Alberto, he slipped his fingers under Gianluigi’s and beneath the thick black hair till Gianluigi winced. Then he started rubbing.

That seemed to help, since Gianluigi pushed his head into Alberto’s hand. Then he shifted, his arm moving along Alberto’s side, so Alberto’s fingers slid down over his ear and back towards his neck. Not wanting a repeat of a couple minutes ago, Alberto let his fingers go limp till Gianluigi had gotten himself arranged. Then he rubbed again, but Gianluigi kept making little adjustments so Alberto had to keep stopping, and finally Alberto just started to pull his hands free. But Gianluigi stopped his right hand, laying two fingers against its back before suddenly tugging it down so something warm and soft could press against its fingertips.

“Shouldn’t be,” Gianluigi muttered. He nibbled at the end of Alberto’s littlest finger, then turned Alberto’s hand to kiss at the side of that finger. “They’re not that common, and Paolo insists that that demon is looking out for that sort of thing.”

The world was getting a little fuzzy, and suddenly it occurred to Alberto that maybe he hadn’t been breathing. He took a breath to check and the world dramatically cleared up. So he snorted at himself and then looked to see if he was doing anything else stupid: his other hand somehow had ended up stroking the back of Gianluigi’s neck, like the angel was one of the fox-demons, but Gianluigi didn’t seem too bothered by it. Actually, now he was sucking on Alberto’s index finger—he did it too hard and Alberto’s nail hit Gianluigi’s teeth. Alberto immediately began to pull it away, but instead ended up getting Gianluigi to turn towards him, Alberto’s finger still mostly in his mouth and the expression in his eyes more questioning than hurt.

Part of Alberto’s lower lip really hurt. So like an idiot, he tried to glance at it and then he figured things out and stopped biting it. Sucked it in instead, and Gianluigi’s eyes went to his mouth, the uncertainty gone in a flash of startling heat. Gianluigi glanced a little higher, then dropped his gaze as he inched himself up Alberto, his tongue flicking at Alberto’s finger. Then it pressed itself to that, wrapping around the first knuckle; Alberto dug his nails into Gianluigi’s nape and Gianluigi jerked so Alberto’s finger popped wetly out of his mouth. He looked at the spit on it, then up at Alberto—or started to, but Alberto was laying the backs of his fingers against Gianluigi’s cheek and the angel turned his head into them, his lashes dropping so it looked like he’d completely shut his eyes.

Though when Alberto pulled him up a moment later, he could see that Gianluigi was still looking, still staring like—like the whole world was right in front of him. Alberto’s face warmed again and he couldn’t help looking away, but then Gianluigi’s mouth pressed over the right corner of his lips, open and wet, and turning back into that just seemed like what Alberto should do. So they were kissing properly, and Alberto was tugging at Gianluigi’s hair again but Gianluigi was making low noises in his throat every time Alberto did it, his hands pressed hard over Alberto’s stomach.

He was a little more aggressive than usual, already flicking his tongue across Alberto’s lower lip. And then Alberto’s hand slipped to jerk hard at Gianluigi’s neck and the angel’s mouth opened in surprise, Alberto’s tongue slipped in, and suddenly Gianluigi had most of his weight lying on Alberto. Which did compress Alberto’s chest in an awkward and potentially suffocating way, but Alberto managed to turn his jerk to free his mouth into a nuzzle at Gianluigi’s jaw so hopefully the angel hadn’t noticed. Gianluigi’s hands did scrabble a little at Alberto’s sides, but then they wrapped up in the cloth, twisting it hard enough for a few stitches to go, as Gianluigi moaned and dropped his head into Alberto’s neck. His hands kept pushing, trying to get Alberto’s shirt up without disentangling themselves from it, and he didn’t seem to realize he was the one pulling the cotton back so Alberto reached down.

And missed, snagging the drawstring of Gianluigi’s sweatpants instead. Alberto tried to twist his fingers free, but only ended up getting the waistband hooked around them too, and then Gianluigi was licking at his neck so that didn’t help his concentration. In the end Alberto just jerked really hard at his hand.

Which didn’t free it, and moreover gave Gianluigi slightly the wrong idea since the angel abruptly hunched up, his hips sliding across Alberto’s thighs. At first Alberto didn’t really get what Gianluigi was doing, but then the cloth around his hand was dragged off, and instead he found himself with a palmful of smooth thigh. And Gianluigi was still wriggling, trying to kick off the sweatpants before he’d even gotten them past his knees—

“Oh! Sorry, I’ll…come back later.”

“Wha—” Alberto ripped his hands away, but then instinctively grabbed for Gianluigi when the angel began to slide off. For some reason Gianluigi didn’t like that, but Alberto hung on and got a crack on the shoulder for it. “Ow.”

Gianluigi instantly whipped around. Somehow Alberto ducked the angel’s elbow so he avoided a second hit, but then he nearly bit Gianluigi when a hand suddenly covered his face. But that was already dropping when Alberto grabbed Gianluigi’s wrist, so he just figured the angel had been aiming for something else.

He pulled down Gianluigi’s hand, but then fingers touched his neck and Alberto flinched. They went away, but then touched his shoulder and his head and finally Alberto just grabbed that one, too. “Stop—”

“Did I hurt you?” Gianluigi said, low and shaking. And Alberto stopped trying to find the stranger and looked at Gianluigi, and the angel…he was really frightened, eyes wide and constantly moving, searching Alberto’s face and body. His fingers were limply curled, and when Alberto tugged his arms down, they swung slightly with the movement. “Did I?”

“No—I—no, I’m fine. I’m just—did you hear something?” Alberto started to look over Gianluigi’s shoulder, but then realized Gianluigi was still staring at him. He opened his mouth, but since he never said anything right he cut himself off.

So instead he tugged Gianluigi’s hands down to his chest and then hooked his chin over Gianluigi’s shoulder so he could see the rest of the room. He didn’t see—Gianluigi shook his hands free, but then flattened his palms against Alberto’s chest, head dropping into Alberto’s neck as he breathed in slowing pants—he didn’t _see_ anybody. And by now Alberto knew to look at the shadows too, and to watch out for the occasional weird glimpse that wasn’t there when you looked straight at it. But he didn’t even see that.

“Um. I’m, um, on the floor.”

Alberto jumped, then snatched at Gianluigi’s shoulder to keep the angel balanced as the whole bed rocked. Then he started to push over Gianluigi, but the angel moved first and so Alberto had a clear way to the edge of the bed. He looked at Gianluigi, who…was rubbing his face and looking irritated, so Alberto assumed it wasn’t dangerous. Anyway, he thought he recognized the voice.

And when he did crawl over and look at the side of the bed, a small dusty black fox was sitting there. David Silva had his head down and one paw over his muzzle, and when he saw Alberto looking at him, he ducked even further so his nose touched the floor. Then he slid off his paw, but kept his head down as his tail nervously twitched. “Sorry. I just…I didn’t mean to interrupt. But I didn’t hear anything at the front door, so I went to see if you were even home, and…”

“Oh. Well, it’s okay. I didn’t shut the door,” Alberto said, leaning down. He held out his hands and after a moment, Silva padded over to let himself be lifted.

“Because we weren’t expecting anyone,” Gianluigi muttered. As Alberto turned to him, he abruptly laid down so he was curling around Alberto’s back, bent so his legs were lying along Alberto’s one hip and his head was nearly touching the other: they’d gotten a bigger bed so Gianluigi didn’t have to do that now, but for some reason Gianluigi still liked lying like that. And also he hadn’t pulled up his sweatpants, and he preferred not to wear underwear when sleeping.

Alberto blushed and hastily turned away, only to find Silva…Silva was sort of staring, with his mouth open and part of his tongue hanging out. He didn’t stop until Alberto bounced him a little, and then he looked up, made a squeaking noise and promptly shut his mouth. He shut his eyes as well, then repeatedly butted Alberto’s arm while muttering to himself till finally Alberto scratched his ears. Which seemed to always be the right response with fox-demons: it made Silva settle down, at least.

“I really didn’t mean to walk in on you,” Silva said. He looked at the mattress as he poked it with a paw, then laid down, back-haunches first. “If you’re, um, busy, I can just go…um, listen, I know I already bothered you, but can I just stay here? Just for tonight? I’ll be out of the way, in the other room.”

“Wait, so there’s no message?” Then Alberto winced, and lightly pulled at Silva’s ears to make up for it. “Sorry, it’s just when one of you shows up, it’s because Figo can’t get to a phone.”

Silva’s tongue curled out and over his lip, then disappeared. His ears moved around under Alberto’s hand, the one nearest to Alberto swiveling to follow something. “No, there’s not. I just…don’t want to get in the way over there, because Figo’s doing his thing and everybody’s too busy with this or that. I don’t want to annoy anybody.”

“Are they really that upset?” Alberto said. A pang of guilt temporarily stilled his hand, though he didn’t realize it till Silva looked quizzically up at him. “God, I really feel bad about my screw-up. I know I should’ve just dropped that off first—”

“Huh? No, no, it’s not—oh, I suck at lying.” Ears drooping, Silva bundled his paws beneath himself and then tried to hide his head under Alberto’s shin. “It’s not really that. I mean, it’s sort of that, because Figo doesn’t need anything distracting him, but it’s just…okay, really it’s because Guaje and Raúl had an argument, and Guaje shouldn’t have done what he did but everybody’s being bitchy about him and I don’t want to listen to it.”

Something touched Alberto’s hip, then drew lightly over the top of the bone to rest against the side of his waist, light but warm. He looked over and saw it was Gianluigi’s hand, and then twisted further around to see Gianluigi’s expressionless stare. At Alberto’s hip, not at his eyes, even when he moved so Gianluigi’s hand slipped off him. Which meant Gianluigi was unhappy.

Alberto started to reach towards him, but stopped when he felt his shin push into Silva. He looked back at the fox-demon, the whole line of Silva’s body so slumped that even Alberto could tell he was depressed, and then at Gianluigi again. He pulled at his hair, then pushed the strands he’d just pulled forward back out of his face, and then he scooped up Silva. Carefully scooted backward, giving Gianluigi time to get out of the way, till he could lean against the headboard. Gianluigi finally looked up, something flickering through his eyes, and Alberto found himself shifting Silva away without really knowing why. He looked at the fox-demon, who wasn’t even reacting to being lifted, and then set Silva down on his other side. Then he opened and closed his mouth a few times, absently picking at the fur on his hands. “Um, Gianluigi…”

“I hit your shoulder. I felt that,” Gianluigi said after a moment, his gaze dropping again. He looked up sharply when Alberto touched the top of his head, then hitched himself up so he was looking at Alberto’s lap. But he just looked at it, and when he reached down to pull up his sweatpants, Alberto understood that that was all he was going to do.

So Alberto pushed at Gianluigi’s head till it was lying on his thigh, then feathered his fingers into Gianluigi’s hair to hold the angel in place. For a moment Gianluigi was merely allowing it, stiff and blankfaced—but then he stretched a little, rolling his shoulders, and Alberto tentatively ran his thumb along the curve of Gianluigi’s ear. Gianluigi closed his eyes, a slight furrow appearing between his eyebrows, and then slightly moved his head so the back of his neck was tipped towards Alberto.

“It’s really stupid,” Silva mumbled. As Alberto looked back at him—almost forgot he was there—the fox-demon shook his head, then sat up enough so that he could bat at a thread hanging off one of the pillowcases. “They’re both stupid. Sometimes I just want to take Guaje and…and… _argh_.” Furious battering of the pillow before Silva dropped his head into it. “That idiot.”

Alberto glanced back at Gianluigi, but the angel hadn’t done anything except slit open his eyes. Which shut again when Alberto started petting his neck, so Alberto turned back to Silva. “Wait, what happened? Did—” ‘Guaje’ was…Villa! Right. “—David Villa do something to Raúl?”

“Only punched him in the head.” Still muzzle-deep in the pillow, Silva hit out with a paw so hard that he made a cloud of dust rise. He sneezed his way up, put a paw to his muzzle, then looked apologetically up at Alberto. “Raúl’s all right. I think he was just surprised more than anything else—I _hope_ he is, because Guaje has a point when he says that Raúl’s different now, but Raúl still was…well…”

“He was a lot of trouble,” Gianluigi rumbled. His hand slid under Alberto’s thigh, then curled around it. “Villa I haven’t heard much of.”

“Guaje’s just as good,” Silva said, jerking up his head. He glowered at Gianluigi, but then sighed and dropped his head onto Alberto’s leg. “Damn it. I just wish they wouldn’t…fight. It’s not good for anybody.”

Alberto tried to remember if he’d seen anything that had to do with what Silva was talking about, but…no, he didn’t think he had. Usually he ran into Figo at the restaurant, and when he was at the bookshop, Cesc always leaped into his arms before he could notice much else. “What are they fighting about?”

Silva mumbled something, burying his head in the pillow again. His ears flattened out, and then the tips sagged downwards; Alberto couldn’t help himself and flipped at one, but it just fell right back. Actually, it sank further.

“It said they’re fighting over the wolf-demon,” Gianluigi said. He appeared genuinely surprised when Silva reared up, then tried to jump over Alberto’s lap with teeth bared. His hand shot out, but fortunately Alberto for once managed to be the quickest.

“David!” Alberto yanked Silva back, then yelped and dropped the fox-demon to clutch at his hand. He gritted his teeth and pressed down on the hurt spot for a couple seconds, vaguely aware that Gianluigi was fully sitting now, and then gingerly uncovered his hand.

It wasn’t that big of a scratch, and actually, it looked like it was already scabbing over at the edge. He could probably pass it off as another papercut, especially since they’d just gotten a new reservations book and it had really stiff, sharp pages—Alberto jumped again. He looked at Silva’s startled face, the little pink tongue still curling back into the fox-demon’s mouth, and then a big bulky thing intervened and Alberto instinctively grabbed it.

Silva eeped and leaped away—and fell off the bed. Alberto gasped and tried to look after him, but—right, holding onto something. Gianluigi, actually, and as Gianluigi fell off-balance, Alberto glimpsed a wild snarl on the angel’s face that made him freeze. Though in a way that made his hands clench down instead of go loose, and good thing because as it was, Gianluigi nearly dragged them both off the bed. Alberto snapped out of it just in time to hook one hand over the bedpost and jerk them to a stop.

But then the pull on his shoulders was too much, and anyway he hadn’t gotten a good grip in the first place, so of course he couldn’t hold on. His fingers slipped off, he felt his body start to go over the edge—

\--and then the world spun crazily, shook hard, and finally settled into place. Alberto’s stomach took another couple of seconds, and then he could try and focus on what was in front of him.

“Oh,” Gianluigi breathed, raw relief glittering in his eyes. He slid his hands down to Alberto’s waist, then leaned forward to press his forehead against Alberto’s shoulder. A long, low exhale came from him as Alberto put an arm around his back. “Don’t ever do that again.”

Alberto blinked. That had been much colder and sharper than Gianluigi usually…

“I was just licking it! To make it heal! I didn’t mean to scratch him and I’m really…I’m really sorry,” Silva said, his voice abruptly dropping off for the last couple words. When Alberto twisted about to look, he just spotted a little slumped body on the floor. “You know what, coming here was a bad idea. Sorry.”

“It was.” Then Gianluigi backed up and blinked at Alberto. “What…?”

Alberto inhaled as he finished pulling his arms back, then started to speak. Except he happened to see the back of his head and the cut there _was_ healed, which distracted him. Then he looked up and saw Gianluigi’s puzzled face, and nearly shook his head at himself. He was ridiculously spazzy, honestly. “Look, he…listen, I’m just going to get Silva a cushion in the next room, okay? I’ll be right back.”

“Wait, what? What was…what was wrong? I don’t—Alberto, wait.” Gianluigi scrambled off the bed so quickly he almost stepped on Silva. He glanced down, upper lip twitching back from his teeth, but then he looked at Alberto again and…he looked so hurt.

“I’m sorry, it’ll just take a minute. No, it’s not your fault,” Alberto muttered, squatting down. Then he frowned, because Silva had vanished. “No, really, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Then why are you taking its side?”

After a moment, Alberto closed his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He pushed his hands over his face, then back into his hair, wondering just how badly he was going to explain this time. He did pretty crap at that when he was calm and thinking clearly, and right now he just—to be honest, he sort of wanted to hit Gianluigi. Except for the part of him that always ached when Gianluigi looked like that, like everything depended on what came out of Alberto’s mouth, and _God_ , but that didn’t help Alberto think any better. But that wasn’t Gianluigi’s fault. But Alberto was stalling.

“I’m not,” Alberto finally said. He took his hands down and put them on his knees, then cracked open his eyes to look around for Silva. When he didn’t see the fox nearby, he balanced one hand on the floor and pivoted about to check behind him, only to find Gianluigi right there. And even though that happened about five times a day, Alberto still gasped and fell backwards.

He was jerked to a stop. And then he had to look at Gianluigi’s begging eyes again, and…Gianluigi lifted his hands from Alberto’s waist and turned them palms-up to Alberto. His head dropped. “What did I do?” he whispered. “I don’t want to do it again.”

“I…God, I just…” Alberto started to reach for his hair again, but managed to detour his hands to Gianluigi’s shoulders before he ripped out all his hair. “Gigi. It’s just…Silva’s a friend, and it was an accident, and anyway it’s a really little cut. I get these all the time. I’m okay, and I’m—I’m really clumsy, but I don’t think I’m that bad. I mean, I managed to survive till I met you, right?”

Gianluigi stiffened, then abruptly raised his head. And wow, that hadn’t been the right thing to say, since the wetness in Gianluigi’s eyes magnified the fear in them. But then Gianluigi dropped his head again, his hands plucking awkwardly at Alberto’s shirt. “I know. I don’t…you’re stronger than I am, I would think. But I saw you dead once, and I—if it ever happens again, I can’t do anything about it. Not again. And I don’t know…I don’t know…”

He was really giving Alberto too much credit, and that was on the tip of Alberto’s tongue…but Alberto kept his mouth shut. Even if he hadn’t had a feeling that that was a stupid thing to say, he just didn’t want to risk it. So instead he pulled Gianluigi to him, cradling the angel’s head against his neck, and put one arm around Gianluigi’s shoulders to try and stop their shivering. That didn’t work, so Alberto started to rub his hand in circles, like how his mother had when he’d been little, and then Gianluigi seemed to calm down.

“If it helps, we’re all _really_ interested in making sure Gila stays alive.” A black nose peeked out from beneath the mattress. When Gianluigi didn’t do anything besides shift around to look, Silva cautiously scooted out the rest of the way. “Um. Really. He’s…we like him. And maybe you don’t trust us, ‘cause of the whole war thing, but…well, demons don’t like giving up people we like? And Gila definitely would go straight to heaven, so we’d never see him again.”

“That’s…I don’t know about that. I think I curse a lot, and I’m friends with a lot of demons. I think that’s against the rules, right?” Alberto said after a moment. He absently ran his finger along the shoulder-seam of Gianluigi’s shirt. “And I made Gigi fall.”

Gianluigi started to lift his head so Alberto let go, but all the angel did was kiss Alberto’s temple before putting his head back on Alberto’s shoulder. “That wasn’t your _fault_. And I keep telling you, I would always do it.”

Alberto was pretty sure he was blushing, and Gianluigi’s head was in the way so he couldn’t hide his face. “Um, so David? Are you okay? You fell and…”

“Huh? No, I’m fine. We bounce.” Silva boinged in place a couple times, stiff-legged, and it was clear that he was going a lot higher than a normal animal should’ve without at least a running start. Then he sat down and pulled his tail around to start pawing at it, like he was combing it. “Oh, also? We don’t _like_ like Gila. Well…nah, Cesc spends too much time in Figo’s bed. I mean, no offense to you, Alberto, ‘cause you are good-looking, but you’re just not…you’re not furry anywhere…ever…”

Blinking, Alberto glanced at Gianluigi, but the bemused expression on the angel’s face was…well, Gianluigi was taking it well. Whatever ‘it’ was. “Okay…”

“And everybody else is pretty—” Silva paused. For quite a while, sitting stock-still with his eyes suddenly distant. Then he abruptly jerked around, kicking at the floor before flopping roughly down with his muzzle slapping onto his forepaws. “Damn it. This is so stupid. You’d think I could just get over it, especially when Guaje’s being a jerk, but…oh, damn it. I kind of love him.”

“Oh,” Alberto intelligently said. Then he grimaced and was going to hit himself, only one, Gianluigi was lying on him. And two, the phone was ringing. “Um, Gigi, can you get—”

“No, I’ll get it. Least I can do, since you’re listening to my idiot complaining and everything,” Silva said, bounding over to the table.

Gianluigi moved a little so Alberto looked down, but the angel looked pretty comfortable. Well, what Alberto could see of him, since Gianluigi was still tucked into Alberto’s neck. And sort of mouthing it as he muttered, which made it a little hard to concentrate on what he was saying. “I know you can look after yourself. You look after me, and I know it’s made matters more complicated for you. And I’d…I can’t seem to do anything now, for you, and it seems unfair when I’ve done nothing but impose on you. I don’t know why you’re so calm about it.”

“You—Gigi, you have a job, you figured out how to keep out the rats without me having to spend a fortune on traps and that…um…” _And you’re fantastic in bed_ , Alberto almost added, but at the last moment he realized that that might be taken the wrong way. Especially if he was right about Gianluigi taking cues from TV shows, since according to Alice, that line always meant the couple was about to break up or that somebody was going to die.

“You still could find someone who’s less trouble, and who could do more,” Gianluigi mumbled. He shifted his head, his hair tickling the underside of Alberto’s jaw. “I said—I’d get better. And I will, but it’s taking so long that I could see why…you wouldn’t want to wait.”

“Except I do want to, and I am. And I’m not even waiting! I love the way things are now, I love cooking dinner for you, I love you. Okay? I mean, the fox-demons, they’re cute but they’re…cute. And bouncy. And—and—” Alberto unexpectedly ran out of breath. He flopped back against the bed, sucking in air. Then he winced ahead of time, preparing to go over what he’d just babbled and figure out if he’d said anything really dumb this time.

Except he didn’t have time to, because Gianluigi was kissing him. Hard, hands clenched around Alberto’s arms—hard and overwhelming and Alberto hadn’t even gotten close to getting his breath back. He was actually blacking out, fingers weakly nudging at Gianluigi’s chest, when Gianluigi finally broke off. Then the world refocused around Gianluigi, around his brilliant smile and even brighter eyes, and Alberto…just loved him. All the time, but right then the intensity of it stopped Alberto’s breath.

Not for long, thankfully, because he badly needed that. He probably looked like a fish gasping the way he did, but Gianluigi’s smile didn’t waver as the angel touched Alberto’s cheek, jaw, and then bent down again—

“Gila! It’s Figo and he says—oh. Crap. Not again.”

Gianluigi froze with his lips barely grazing Alberto’s mouth. Then he slouched back, expression not quite smooth but trying hard for it. He looked down at Alberto’s belly, his mouth quivering even though his lips were whitening from the pressure he was putting on them.

“Um, you can be annoyed at that. I just don’t like it when you try to squish them,” Alberto said.

Silva put his head between his legs. “I’m _sorry_. I wasn’t paying attention, but…” A crackling sound came from him and he jumped up, revealing the phone under his belly. “Figo says it’s important.”

“No, it’s okay. If you hadn’t interrupted, he’d just call back and be more upset,” Alberto sighed, picking up the phone. He grinned in sympathy when Gianluigi huffed and slipped back against his side, but then tried to wipe that off his face. Figo wouldn’t have liked the delay, and at this point Alberto was almost positive the man could _see_ through telephone lines. At least, he always seemed to know exactly what Zlatan was doing. “Hi, it’s Alberto, sorry about that. So what’s the matter?”

* * *

Luís sat back in his chair, balancing the cup and saucer on his knee. Something that wasn’t the chair back sank slightly beneath his head and he paused to let the fox whisk its tail out of the way, then finished settling himself. “So.”

Pairs of gleaming fox eyes looked down from all corners of the room: the bookshelves, the table, the arms and top of the couch across from Luís where Zinedine was sitting. And so far, after the first tight-lipped look about, relatively relaxed. He didn’t look happy about where he was, but he didn’t look like he was going to run out screaming, either. Damn. “Figo. We know a little about your reputation as a mage. You don’t claim to be part of any coven or…”

“No. I don’t like all the rules and the hierarchy that comes with that sort. I don’t have any problem with it, it’s just personal preference,” Luís said. Then he took a sip of his tea. He noticed Zinedine’s eyebrow move slightly and nodded towards the rapidly-cooling cup on the table between them. “It’s beef tea.”

“Thank you, I’m not wanting.” Zinedine didn’t fidget or look about at anything, but just stared straight at Luís. It was a decently effective measure to unnerve one.

The little ripple of shadows at his shoulders, on the other hand, was unnecessarily dramatic. Even if it caught some of the fox-demons off-guard and had them flinching away; Luís spared a glower for them. If they couldn’t help, they might as well hide in the bedroom.

“I see the rumor about you being familiar with demons is true.” It was hard to tell whether Zinedine was completely humorless, or just preferred his sarcasm extremely dry. He kept his hands loosely clasped on his knees and his sharp-bridged nose pointing forward, but still somehow managed to indicate the surrounding audience. “Do you have a formal arrangement?”

“Not really. They take turns working the till downstairs, but that’s about as close as it comes.” Which wasn’t true: Raúl at least acted as if Luís were on an equal footing with him—and with Maman, as far as Luís could tell; the mothers with kits tended not to come around often, wary of the random magical objects Luís had lying around. And according to the research Luís had done, that was not the same as treating him as a stranger who deserved respect. But Luís decidedly did not want to end up pitting one tribe of demons against another, especially when some internal drama was splitting the one he knew he liked, and so he’d told the foxes not to bring it up or indulge in any dumb posturing. “I do sleep with them.”

Zinedine took that…fairly well. His eyebrows twitched again. “I take it you don’t mean just as handwarmers.”

Then again, maybe the demon did have a sense of wit. Pity that he didn’t let it move his face, since at the moment he was reminding Luís far too much of Gianluigi. “No. I thought you would’ve been able to smell that.”

“Then why tell me, if you think I’d already know?” Zinedine asked. He leaned forward, his hands dropping off his knees to clasp between those.

“Because I like to make sure people know what I know. It tends to save me a lot of trouble, and when it doesn’t, at least I’m sure what’s caused the mess.” Luís drank more tea. His was chamomile and verbena, but it didn’t seem to be working at calming him. Probably he should’ve just gone with coffee and a good lashing of anisette. “Next question?”

The hands went back to the knees, but otherwise Zinedine didn’t move. He stared at Luís, unblinking, till Luís’ skin began to prickle. Then he opened his mouth, but instead of speaking, he picked up the tea-cup from the table and took a sip. He did that a little oddly, pouring it into the side of his mouth as if he wasn’t used to using the front of his lips. “You’re married to a swan-maiden.”

“And I’m not breaking that bond,” Luís affirmed. He felt something brush his ear and resisted the urge to bat at it, but then it did it again. So Luís put up his tea-cup, and whichever fox-demon it was got the point and took the cup and itself away.

Zinedine pursed his lips. “There’s no problem with her, at least from the clan’s point of view. We have a longstanding treaty with the swans. The foxes are more…difficult, but I think a compromise could be made. Even your association with Zlatan is acceptable, since he has proved his strength, if not his diplomatic skills. But there is one outstanding point that concerns us.”

The demon talked oddly as well, stiffer than his calm, almost languid pose seemed to deserve. It was like his lips were half-paralyzed, or like someone else was moving them who didn’t quite know how to do it. “Yes?”

“The fallen angels. There have been three new ones, and I understand you’ve been somewhat involved in that,” Zinedine said. He looked at the tea cup, then put it back on the table. A trace of approval might’ve crossed his eyes, but it was gone by the time he looked at Luís again. “We don’t mind subverting them—”

“I had nothing to do with that. Any of them. Except watch, and then clean up the bookshop afterward.” Luís…he was a bit startled, to be honest. Helen, the fox-demons… _Zlatan_ , who could claim credit for taking off several years of Luís’ life, and before he’d met Paolo and Sandro…and they were going to have a problem with the angels? These demons had very odd priorities.

“—but continued association with them is a different question.” And there Zinedine stopped, his lips folding up like that was it.

He and Luís looked at each other for a few minutes. Somewhere in the room, a fox got too fidgety, fell off whatever it was on, and yelped before quietly vanishing into the shadows. At least, Luís hoped that the lack of following noise was what that meant.

“What question, exactly?” Luís asked.

“A question.” Zinedine’s brows lowered slightly.

Luís rubbed at the side of his nose, and then at his temple. “What _question_.”

More staring. A couple of the younger fox-demons began to edge away from Zinedine, and then it was obvious why, as two large, feathered wings whipped out from his shoulders, making objects rattle and rustle all over the room. They were very impressive: more tapered and sleeker than angel-wings, their streamlined form speaking to speed and to efficiency, with grayish feathers that glinted blue.

“Hawk,” Luís observed. He slouched in his seat a bit more, tugging at his nose. Then he put out his hand, grabbed the end of the chair, and pulled himself back up, letting himself look as tired as he felt. “Nice. Now, back to…”

“I don’t think you understand that this depends on whether I—on whether you’re acceptable.” Even annoyed, Zinedine wasn’t particularly emotional. Which wasn’t to say that he probably couldn’t do a lot of damage, but…

Honestly, Luís thought. With his reputation the way it was, did nobody understand that it was not simply goddamn dumb luck or excellent research skills that had kept him alive? What did he have to do, anyway? Offer to referee Zlatan and Freddie’s next fight?

Luís ran his hands over his face again, then lifted his head and looked at Zinedine. Who was staring slightly behind Luís, those wings a little lowered from before. His eyebrows were up, and when he noticed Luís watching him, they went even further. “Not bad.”

“Thanks,” Luís said, and didn’t wave away the glowing sigils that had appeared all over the walls and ceiling. “Incidentally, I’m also very attached to my home here and wouldn’t like to have to move for any reason. So could we possibly go back to having a civil conversation?”

Zinedine’s face remained smooth, but definitely due to willpower rather than to any real composure. Beneath that pale skin, things were twitching and seething and hopefully, thinking. “Figo, you’re engaged. It can’t be broken by you or by—us, but if we think it’s worth it, we might be able to be flexible. You can’t.”

“Be flexible? I could introduce you to witnesses to the contrary, but I don’t think you’d enjoy talking to them,” Luís said, shrugging. He, on the other hand, did enjoy watching Zinedine’s jaw muscle tighten, even if he couldn’t be as tactless as Zlatan and grin back. “Zinedine. I think there are two ways of looking at worth here: what’s the value of doing it, and then what’s the value of not doing it and irritating me. And yes, I’m human and I would lose in the end, but you’d remember me. Believe me, you would.”

As abruptly as they’d come, the wings disappeared. A frown finally creased Zinedine’s face into some sort of emotion, though his eyes remained too narrow and opaque to read. He slowly leaned back against the sofa, gaze going up and down Luís. “I don’t like you all that much.”

“Well, the feeling’s mutual,” Luís muttered, finally deactivating the protection spells. He looked down at his hands, then back up at Zinedine. “But we have to get through this, so I suggest we just shelve this discussion for now and go back a bit. Maybe to _who_ , exactly, is my affianced?”

Zinedine…winced. It was a very, very slight wince, but still detectable. And for a moment there that veil over his eyes had fallen and an actual personality had been looking out, but then he’d shut down too quickly for Luís to get a good assessment of it. “I don’t think—”

There was a scuffle in the hall, and then Morientes came barreling into the room, in human form but with wolf-ears pricked straight up on top of his head. He paused when he saw Zinedine, nostrils flaring, but then just gave a short nod before turning to Luís. “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s a problem.”

“My God, when isn’t there?” Luís snapped, sinking down. Then he remembered about Zinedine, but then decided he didn’t give a damn. If Zinedine wanted to know what they were getting, he could just watch. “Weren’t you trying to track down Villa?”

“Yes, and I was in the sewers and they’re full of rat-demons. I think they’re swarming,” Mori said.

Swarming—but Zlatan had—no, that’d been something else. But he’d just been down there, and swarming wasn’t exactly something that was easy to miss. And Luís was up on his feet, thinking. “ _Think_?”

“I mean, Sergio just went off to get a head-count of the kits, and Raúl is doing everyone else. And I need to borrow your shotguns.” Well, Fernando was completely ignoring how annoyed Luís was, and also already heading for the gun-closet, so he was serious. “Do you have any—”

“How many swarms have you seen? Those aren’t going to last out the hour. Go get me some cow fat. And—” Luís spun about, but there wasn’t a single fox-demon in sight.

Zinedine was still there, blinking rapidly and looking at Luís like Luís was a completely different person. Though it wasn’t clear if Zinedine liked this one better, and like that really mattered. “What are you doing?”

“Defending my damn life, and if you don’t mind, I’ll get back to you later on your objections to that,” Luís said. “Mori, wait. Send somebody else to get the cow fat. I’m going to call—”

“Everyone’s in but Villa and Silva,” Cesc said, popping out of the armchair’s shadow. “I have a feeling Silva went to Gila’s place. He’s been swapping watches to go there lately, because—”

Fernando abruptly jerked away, muttering something about still working on Villa. Cesc looked after him, proving that fox-muzzles could cover a surprising range of emotions, but then turned expectantly back to Luís.

“—Zlatan, I was going to say. He was in the sewers last week, so he should’ve noticed anything odd. There should’ve been signs of this for weeks beforehand. And then I’ll call Alberto…if Silva’s there, then he should be fine for now.” Luís scratched Cesc’s head as he leaned over to grab the phone.

Except it was handed to him, and then Zinedine was standing across from Luís, unconcernedly rolling his shoulders till they cracked. “I’d like to see what you’re like in action.”

“Fine, but if you get in the way, I’ll just knock you out of it,” Luís muttered. Not really thinking about it, too busy trying to sort out plans in his head, and well, that was what having Zlatan drag home near-apocalypse after near-apocalypse did for one’s reflexes. A moment later Luís reconsidered his words and looked up.

But Zinedine was still simply standing there, head slightly tilted and eyes narrowed even more. He didn’t move, so after another moment, Luís flipped about the phone and began to dial, forgetting about him.

* * *

Paolo wiggled a little, his breathing beginning to go back to normal. Then he went limp again on top of Zlatan, one long, ragged exhale blowing warmly past Zlatan’s ear. “Mmm.”

His knee was jammed into Zlatan’s ribs, but the way Paolo was lying, Zlatan had a noseful of shower-damp, curling, fragrant hair. And Paolo had apparently switched shampoos again, because while Zlatan had been indifferent to whatever the angel had been using before, he couldn’t get enough of whatever this was. It was ridiculous, and he knew it was ridiculous, and yet he was still sniffing at Paolo’s hair. And it was really, really good, on top of what Paolo smelled like normally, and Paolo was just all warm and soft and, relaxed as he was, nicely fitted around Zlatan’s prick. So okay, knee in the side, not the worst life had thrown at Zlatan.

“ _Mmm_ ,” Paolo mumbled, shifting again. He lifted his hips a bit, held the position for one second and then gave up, flopping back onto Zlatan. His hand brushed against Zlatan’s cheek, then settled pretty firmly on Zlatan’s shoulder as Zlatan licked along the curve of his ear. “Tickles.”

Zlatan snorted and teased his tongue further into the shell of the ear before flicking it down to wrap about the soft lobe. Then he dragged it along the line of Paolo’s jaw, letting it broaden so by the time he’d reached Paolo’s chin, it was human-width. He let it slide off, but Paolo turned his head and just touched part of it with his lip. Then Paolo twisted around, pressing his mouth to the corner of Zlatan’s lips, his hands sluggishly beginning to move down Zlatan’s arm, into Zlatan’s hair.

Somewhere nearby, something dully thumped. Then…Zlatan lifted his head, absently stroking at Paolo’s back, and then realized the weirdness was just the water shutting off. Finally. “What the fuck is he doing in there? I went in, went out…you went in, went out…and he’s _just_ now done?”

“Settings.” Then Paolo dragged himself up and propped his forearm against Zlatan’s chest, bleary-eyed and flushed and satiated. He blinked a few times, obviously trying to pull his thoughts together. “He hasn’t actually said he likes it, but he keeps playing with that new showerhead you installed. With the…the setting where it spins and…”

“Feels like I’m doing this?” Zlatan asked, grinning. And walked his fingers down Paolo’s back, digging into each spot with his fingertip before moving on to the next one. When Paolo arched, Zlatan ducked under the angel’s head to mouth at the underside of Paolo’s jaw. “He would like that, the snooty jerk. He always did like it on the rough side.”

Paolo’s moan trailed off a bit too soon, and even though he was still bending into Zlatan’s hands, he tried to turn towards Zlatan. The first time he managed to nick his chin on Zlatan’s—luckily human—canine, and then the second time he twisted around to give Zlatan an odd, slightly concerned look. His fingers loosely twined in Zlatan’s hair, then slipped partly out to lie along the side of Zlatan’s brow.

Zlatan almost wanted to hit him. Because honestly, they’d had a really good build-up going, and then Paolo…had to look like…like…Zlatan sighed, kissed Paolo, and then dropped his head. “Okay, _what_? Did he say something?”

“No. No,” Paolo muttered, glancing away. He shook his head, hissed a bit as that flexed down to their hips, and then looked back at Zlatan, slightly less anxious. “I…it’s nothing.”

“You’re a worse liar than Gila, you know.” More banging around in the bathroom, to the point that Zlatan was beginning to wonder if Sandro had suddenly decided to renovate the place. “What?”

The fingers on Zlatan’s brow circled downwards, then threaded back into Zlatan’s hair just below his ear. On both sides, as Paolo brought up his other hand. Then he bent to rest his cheek against the side of Zlatan’s jaw. “It’s…well, you two are a lot better these days. And no, I’m _happy_ about that, believe me, but…I’m sorry, I was just thinking nothing major had happened, but…”

“Okay, I can make nice with Sandro when there _isn’t_ some Duke of Hell snatching you away to the fucking San Siro, of all places. I don’t have to be made to do it, like a little kid,” Zlatan snapped, looking up. He met Paolo’s apologetic eyes, with those fragile curling strands not shielding their hurt at all, and had to grab Paolo’s waist to keep from doing something stupid. Seriously, sometimes Paolo’s expressions could be more effective than demonic emotional manipulation, and there were demons who specifically bred for that ability. “I…just what? It’s weird that we don’t really want to kill each other now?”

“Do you really? Not want to?” Then Paolo shut his mouth and ducked his head, looking a little annoyed at himself. “Never mind. This isn’t really a—”

“No.” Zlatan knew Paolo was looking sharply at him, but stared at the ceiling instead, trying to ignore that tight pushy feeling in his chest. He opened his mouth to take what he’d said back, and then rolled his eyes at himself because for fuck’s sake, he did what he wanted. And that didn’t mean he couldn’t _learn_ , and know better how to do what he wanted, no matter what Freddie sniped when Zlatan wasn’t close enough to grab him. “I—no, I don’t. Which, not that he appreciates this, is really fucking up my reputation. And man, am I giving up a lot of payback. He nearly killed me a couple times.”

Paolo grimaced and rocked from side to side, then suddenly dropped to lie completely on Zlatan, his head fitting into the crook of Zlatan’s neck. His hands drifted from Zlatan’s hair, one sliding beneath Zlatan’s head and the other to Zlatan’s shoulder, where it traced random shapes along the bone. “I know. Except not really…I’ve only heard about it, and I don’t know how accurate that was.”

“If they said it wasn’t a big deal, they didn’t know what they were talking about. He’s such a prissy little—except I know that from watching him organize his mise-en-place, fuss with his hair in the morning…when he’s fighting, he just throws everything he’s got at you.” Which was one of the few things about Sandro that Zlatan respected, and he didn’t feel bad at all for that. He didn’t even feel like he was admitting anything, since Sandro was _vicious_ , and nobody who saw him in a fight could say differently. Especially since they were probably dead. “I gave it all right back to him, but fuck, did it hurt healing afterward. Second only to Hell.”

“That’s basically what he says. And all he says,” Paolo said after a moment.

Zlatan cocked his head, listening for bathroom noises, and then laid back when he figured that Sandro was still toweling himself off. “You can’t really say more. I mean, if you really want, I could give you the blow-by-blow…but why would you want that? It’s—no, I _know_ it’s gonna upset you and then you’ll go around with that look on your face, the one that gets him all jumpy and annoys me. And anyway, it doesn’t mean anything. It was just fighting. The war. That.”

“Look?” Eyebrow lifted, Paolo rose to gaze down at Zlatan. At first his expression was faintly bemused, but then it gradually went to exactly what Zlatan had just been talking about, all drawn lips and dark, nervous eyes. Paolo pursed his lips, then acted like he was going to speak—but instead petted Zlatan’s shoulder some more, head tipped so his hair half-veiled his face.

“Look,” Zlatan said, sighing but deliberate. “We fought. Beat the shit out of each other. And it wasn’t more than that, at least for me, because I haven’t bought into the whole fucking war of Heaven and Hell idea for a long time. But I still had to go after angels because that was my job, and so I did that. It hurt, but a lot about demon life hurts. Or did hurt. It was never personal back then.”

“I can understand that, but I know…at the beginning, when it became personal, it wasn’t that easy. And I just…I’m surprised it seems to be now. But maybe that says something about me, about what I can’t shake from before,” Paolo replied, looking back at Zlatan. And he held Zlatan’s gaze, sober and regretful. “I’m sorry about that, and about putting you…making you and Sandro deal with each other. I wish I could’ve done something there.”

Sometimes it was really hard to tell which of them was worse at the self-guilt: Sandro was more obvious about it, and did it a lot more often, but when Paolo did it, he _really_ did it. And Zlatan hated it, hated looking at it and hearing it and just knowing that Paolo still had moments when he was seeing those damn bars around him. Like it hadn’t been hard enough to get out of them, and—Zlatan exhaled, then reached up and curled his hand around the back of Paolo’s neck. “Like what? Not fucked both of us? That wasn’t going to happen, believe me—you know what I don’t get? Why you and he still think about this kind of stuff. I mean, you can’t really put me in something that I can walk away from if I don’t want it, and anyway, all that shit doesn’t matter now.”

Paolo tilted his head, his eyes so intensely on Zlatan that it felt like they were sucking up Zlatan’s words. When Zlatan finished, he stayed like that, till Zlatan started to shift, and then Paolo turned his head some more, his eyes falling shut as he nuzzled at the inside of Zlatan’s wrist. His mouth tickled down the tendons, paused to press softly to the bend of Zlatan’s elbow, and then he dropped to kiss Zlatan, long and exploring and…thankful, it seemed.

Then he slid off, his cheek sliding across Zlatan’s, and settled on top of Zlatan with a contented sigh. That tightness in Zlatan’s chest dissolved, but Zlatan still felt ridiculously involved in the whole thing, like the angels’ guilt-tripping was getting to him, too. Which was not going to happen, since okay, he was really attached to Paolo and—and yeah, he’d probably miss Sandro too—but he wasn’t turning into a cooing mess, damn it. He wasn’t a normal demon, but he still was a demon. Really.

“Besides, if Sandro and I had to fight seriously now, I think I’d be too busy laughing. I’d just look at his kill-you face and see all the times he’s done that with…with peas in his hair, or frizzed out because he doesn’t know how to change a fuse, or just because he’s a selfish bastard and can’t accept that I’m too tired to tongue-fuck him,” Zlatan added.

A snort blasted against Zlatan’s neck. Then Paolo chuckled, his hand curling loosely over Zlatan’s collarbone. Some of his hair flopped over Zlatan’s nose and Zlatan couldn’t help sniffing it, and damn it, it still smelled amazing. A little different now, more mixed with Paolo’s sweat, but that just made it even better. Added a nice edge, so Zlatan didn’t feel so lazy about it and more like…he turned his head so his nose was pressed into the side of Paolo’s head…more like…he wanted to do something. And before Paolo had had his little crisis, they had been doing pretty well.

Zlatan turned further, trying to get his nose behind Paolo’s ear, and something pinged so he jerked completely over, rolling Paolo beneath him. A startled noise was muffled into Zlatan’s chest, but Zlatan didn’t pay too much attention because that damn ping was _still_ going and not only that, but getting louder and louder and—oh. His phone. Figo. Fuck.

He needed to adjust the alert spell, Zlatan told himself as he dragged them over about a hand’s-width so he could reach the bedside table. Too damn loud, and anyway, why was Figo calling? Hadn’t he sworn that Zlatan could go home and get to fucking angels senseless?

So when Zlatan finally put his cell to his ear, he was a little annoyed. “What.”

The sudden pressure on Zlatan’s cock made him look down so he missed Figo’s reply. Which was going to get him in trouble, and really soon, but Paolo was squirming and that was really, really distracting. Especially when he was tossing his head around, fanning more of his scent into the air and…that was really good…

*Zlatan!*

Zlatan jerked his nose out of Paolo’s hair and stared wildly at the headboard. “What!”

“Wait—that—” Paolo twisted to the left, then arched as his legs snapped around Zlatan’s waist. He tensed up, then suddenly dropped back onto the bed, his throat bent towards Zlatan and his arms falling slack on either side of him. “Oh. _There_.”

Shit, that was distracting. “Figo?”

*Was that Paolo I heard? Are you fucking him?* And Figo sounded pretty ticked off too, for some reason. Probably not a reason Zlatan was going to like, judging from past experience. *Oh, never mind. Ibra, sorry I had to call after all, but I need to ask you a few things. Then you can get back to… _Zlatan_. Did you just stick your tongue in his mouth?”

Zlatan carefully lifted his head from Paolo’s throat; Paolo looked sort of sorry about things, but then he hissed and clenched at the mattress, and Zlatan suddenly realized he’d just hitched his hips into Paolo without thinking about it. Well, when Paolo looked the way he did now, all wide-eyed and slack-mouthed, thought generally wasn’t required.

*For God’s sake.* Figo’s voice suddenly went muffled, like he’d buried it in his hand. *You have no attention span. At all.*

“Hey, I’m listening now. And you _said_ you didn’t need me anymore, so is it my fault if I make alternative plans?” Zlatan muttered. He briefly thought about getting off of Paolo, but in the middle of that he looked down again and…no, not unless he really wasn’t going to be able to finish this. Because this was way too damn good to pass up, and besides, he deserved it with all the shit he took. “What is it?”

*The sewers. Mori just came from them and he says they’re filled with rat-demons, and it looks like a swarm. But you were—*

Zlatan propped himself up on one arm. “But I was just down there! I didn’t see anything like that. And okay, I was trying to get out of there as fast as possible, but still. It’s kind of hard to miss a fucking _swarm_.”

*I wasn’t saying you had,* Figo sighed. His voice was clear again, so Zlatan could tell the tone was definitely put-upon. In the background foxes were barking, and also there was a voice Zlatan didn’t recognize that sometimes seemed to be answering them and sometimes just talking over Figo. *Well, all right, I was hoping maybe you’d noticed something, because then it won’t take the whole night to figure out what happened and deal with it…*

“What’s the matter?” Paolo murmured, nuzzling at Zlatan’s throat. He’d crossed his ankles over Zlatan’s back and his heels were digging into the tops of Zlatan’s buttocks.

The strange voice briefly became louder, and at the same time Figo’s voice abruptly lessened in volume as he answered whoever it was. Still, Zlatan could distinctly hear a sharpness to Figo’s tone that hadn’t been there when the man had been talking to him. Weird. “Rat-demon swarm.”

Paolo blinked at Zlatan, all pretty and disheveled. And then he unhooked his ankles and dropped his head back into the pillows, his eyes snapping into focus and his brows coming down so…well, he still looked good, but he’d just lost the mood, all right. “What? Why?”

*So you haven’t?* Figo asked at the same time.

Zlatan looked at Paolo, then glanced over his shoulder as the bathroom door banged open. Sandro stood there, face screwed up like his internal sourness had finally pickled him, taking up the whole doorway with his one arm stretched out to grab the jamb and his other extended to dangle something wrapped in a towel. A towel that had rapidly-spreading, greenish glowing stains on it.

“There are _rat-demons_ in the _plumbing_ ,” he hissed.

“Uh, yeah, Figo just called about that.” Then Zlatan made a face right back. “Don’t look at me like that, I didn’t put them there. And for fuck’s sake, we can see you killed it so stop waving it around, princess. You’re going to get blood on the floor.”

Paolo grabbed Zlatan’s arms and neck and pulled himself up so his chin nearly cleared Zlatan’s shoulder, but then stiffened, hissing. A moment later he was down on the bed again, but wriggling off Zlatan’s prick and damn it, they really weren’t going to get to anything more tonight. “Sandro? Did it bite you? Are you—”

“I’m _fine_.” With an irritable jerk of the head, Sandro pivoted and stomped back into the bathroom; something thunked really loudly and Paolo winced. About a minute later, Sandro came back out minus the bloody lumpy towel, and actually, he was naked—still naked, even though Zlatan knew there was more than one towel in the bathroom. “Why are they swarming? Zlatan? What did you do—”

“I killed ghouls! I didn’t do this! Why the fuck would I? I hate those fucking little nuisances, and probably even more than you. You’ve never had to eat one, I bet,” Zlatan snapped, rolling off Paolo. Then he remembered the phone and slapped it back to his ear so Sandro could see. If Sandro wanted to bitch, then he’d have to be rude, too. “Figo? So yeah, didn’t see anything in the sewers. And I just talked to Henke a couple days ago, and if anything weird had been scheduled, I think he would’ve mentioned it, but he didn’t mention anything. So…”

Sandro was still standing there, staring at Zlatan as if Zlatan was made of squished rat-demons. “You…ate…”

“Make one fucking crack about my taste and I’ll hit you. I was hungry. You know, it happens when some fucking asshole locks you up and tries to starve you to death.” Rat-demon swarms…what did Zlatan know about rat-demon swarms…not much. Most demons were embarrassed to acknowledge the damn things even existed, let alone were remotely connected to them. And for good reason, since rat-demons were ugly, mindlessly vicious, and not useful for a damn thing. Except annoying the fuck out of everybody when they swarmed, since then they’d attack anything, even other demons. “Luís?”

*Listening. I wish I haven’t been, but hindsight…anyway, so what about people?*

“What about people?” Zlatan scooted to the side of the bed, then swung his legs over. He glanced down at himself, grimaced in regret, and then reluctantly pushed that aside. Then he looked about, trying to find where Paolo had tossed his trousers, but once again, Sandro was _still_ standing there. Staring at Zlatan, and now like…like he…oh, no, he’d better not.

After another moment, Sandro abruptly ducked away and half-turned back to the bathroom, absently rumpling his hair. “Oh. I…oh. Well. Where did you put the drain cleaner?”

“It’s still under the sink, unless you moved it again,” Zlatan muttered. Okay, no dumb apology, but Sandro was still pulling in his shoulders and tugging at his wrists and generally acting extremely uncomfortable with himself, the way he always got when feeling sorry for Zlatan. Which was the one thing Zlatan really didn’t need from the angel. “Hey, I thought you redid the wards this week. How’d that thing get through?”

“I did them, actually,” Paolo said. A little closer than Zlatan remembered him being, but Paolo sensibly froze in place so Zlatan had time to stop his reflexive elbow short of the angel’s face. Paolo blinked once, eyes wide, and then shook his head and began bundling the bedsheet around his waist. “I wasn’t thinking about swarms, though, so probably…”

*…call in a moment to check. If he’s there, I’ll telling him to stay there. I don’t have time to get him, and if Gianluigi goes out he’ll overreact to the damn things and probably blow up a couple pipes. I don’t want to wake up to the smell of raw sewage tomorrow. If I even get to sleep tonight…Zlatan? Still there?* Figo asked.

Zlatan shrugged and stretched across the bed, at first because he’d finally spied his trousers tossed over the table on that side, and then because Paolo was muttering disgustedly to himself. When Zlatan flicked a piece of hair from his eyes, Paolo looked up with a startled expression, then smiled. He got in a kiss to Zlatan’s cheek as Zlatan crawled across the bed, and then got off the bed himself looking considerably happier with himself. “People?”

*Anyone around who’d be stupid enough to call up a swarming?*

“I don’t think I know anybody stupid enough to try it, period. I mean, the only one I’ve ever heard of in modern times is that Portuguese moron…” Gianluigi? Why would he come up? Were the damn rats targeting fallen angels or something? Because Zlatan had had his fill of jackasses coming after them for the year, and if it was that, then fuck keeping a low profile. _He’d_ blow something up.

Figo was arguing with somebody again, trying to tell them they couldn’t go in the sewers when there was a very, very good chance that they’d be eaten alive. When he finally came on the line again, he sounded pretty explosive himself. *What, Mourinho? That wasn’t…well, to be absolutely fair, that wasn’t stupidity so much as him losing his temper at the wrong time…which could be seen as a temporary lack of intelligence…but anyway, it can’t be him. He’s in hiding in Portugal. Something about Black Hounds.*

“He’s messing around with the English? Oh, that explains why Deco was so fucking touchy at Henke’s solstice party…okay, so I guess we don’t know what’s causing this. What are we doing?” Zlatan asked. He snagged his trousers, flipped the legs straight and then started to pull them on. Then something rattled loudly in the bathroom and Zlatan looked up, but Sandro yelled that he had it but he needed more drain cleaner. Whereupon Paolo said he’d get that, and Zlatan might’ve stared at Paolo’s bedsheet-wrapped ass leaving instead of getting back to dressing himself. “You want me to meet you over at your place, or in the sewers?”

*I thought you had an infestation over there. Anyway, I’m not about to just go charging in without knowing what the hell is going on.*

“Luís, it’s a swarm. As in, they’re gonna charge at you anyway? Besides, even if we don’t know who started it, all we have to do to end it is find the broodmother and kill her. And at this point I really need to kill something.” Trousers on, Zlatan rooted about in the closet past Paolo’s zillions of super-tailored shirts till he found one of his. Then he started shoveling out Sandro’s socks to find a pair his size. “Look, yes, I was in the middle of fucking Paolo and now I’m not, and it’s these stupid rat-demons’ fault, and what? Like you’ve got a better reason for going after them.”

*Like general concern for the citizens of my adopted city?* Figo dryly said. Then he snorted dismissively. *Well, go ahead, but I can’t join you right away. Not all the fox-demons are accounted for and I’ve got to deal with that first.*

Zlatan paused, not quite getting that. Then he did, but he needed another moment to try and not sound like a whiny brat. Which he failed at, but at least he’d tried. “Figo, seriously, they’re fox-demons. They should know a swarm when they see one, and anyway—”

*Anyway I don’t keep them around for sex. I don’t keep them, period. We cohabitate, and I happen to enjoy their company and don’t be a thoughtless dick now, Ibra. I don’t have time to come over there and smack some sense into you,* Figo snapped.

And then he hung up. He seriously hung up. For a good minute all Zlatan did was stare at the phone, absently wincing at the high screech it was emitting.

“Zlatan? Whenever you’re done chatting, I could use some _help_ making sure the plumbing works for your early-morning _shower-singing_ sessions.”

“He called me a dick,” Zlatan said. He looked at the phone for a second longer, then flipped it shut. Then stared at that before finally giving himself a shake and turning around. “A _dick_.”

Sandro’s mouth opened for the obvious retort. Except that never came, and a moment later, Sandro shut his mouth and leaned against the jamb, his expression an odd mixture of frustration, confusion and…worry? He seemed to realize he was acting weirdly and fiddled with the towel he’d finally slung on. “Does that mean something?”

Zlatan shrugged as he backed away from the closet. He stopped in the middle of the room to stuff his phone in his pocket—and think—before taking a couple steps Sandro’s way. Then he stopped, thought again, and then he blew out an irritated breath through his nose. “Yeah. It means Figo’s in some sort of shit he doesn’t want me to know about. Fine, let’s do the damn plumbing, but then I’m going to see what’s up…what?”

“I already blocked off this end. There’s nothing more to do here,” Sandro said. He waited for Zlatan to get irritated. Deliberately. He had that gleam in his eyes, and it was total bullshit that angels couldn’t be malicious. “It’s not _done_. We have to go down to the basement and clear out the rest. And if we’re down there we might as well look into the sewers.”

“Wait, are you saying let’s go check out what’s going on? Are you sick again?” Then Zlatan made to check Sandro’s forehead, but the angel irritably ducked away from him. Rolling his eyes, Zlatan just dropped his arm, caught Sandro at breast-level and yanked him back, pinning him against the doorway. “Oh. I see. You just want—”

“—I was killing that thing and you two were moaning and nibbling!” Hair snapped wildly at Zlatan’s eyes, then fell back into a tangled mess as Sandro subsided, breathing a bit quicker. “I—”

Zlatan kissed him. Sandro bit back, Zlatan jerked Sandro’s arms so the teeth got out of his lip, and then Sandro grabbed Zlatan’s shoulders and really got into it. And that actually wasn’t a bad thing—at least till the plumbing moaned, and then Sandro nearly tore open Zlatan’s lip as he flinched and dropped back against the jamb. He glanced at Zlatan’s mouth, then shrugged and pushed Zlatan back.

“Could’ve yelled sooner, couldn’t you? I think you just wanted to make us feel bad,” Zlatan muttered.

Sandro’s hand came up sharply, then took a sudden detour to Zlatan’s left bicep. So did Sandro’s glower, and as he stared at Zlatan’s arm, his expression smoothed a bit. Then the corner of his mouth quirked. “Stop being annoying. I didn’t yell because I could take care of one by myself.”

“What about you being pissy over taking so long in the shower that you got a rat-demon instead of my tongue up your—”

This time, Sandro grabbed Zlatan’s head. He almost made up for it, but pulled away just as Zlatan was starting to remember why he couldn’t completely hate the angel’s mouth. His hand stayed up on Zlatan’s cheek a little long, and only left when Sandro turned away, sliding past Zlatan into the bedroom. “Your tongue isn’t _that_ unique. It’s a good thing it turns out you’ve got a few other traits to make up for that flaw, or else you’d just be like any other demon.”

“Like putting up with your ice-cube toes and your snot on my shoulder?” Zlatan asked, pivoting to follow the angel. “And hey, not every demon can do what I can—wait. Wait. You—your cold. You said that was leftover from what I did to get rid of the ghouls last week. How do you know? What happened?”

Sandro stopped where he was, looking like he didn’t understand what Zlatan was saying. So Zlatan started to repeat it, but Sandro threw up his hand and cut Zlatan off. He frowned off into the distance, then put up both hands to grab in self-disgust at his hair. “ _Oh_. No, I know what this is. Call Figo back. Now.”

* * *

Just in time, Luís froze in place. He stared at the two little ears that bracketed his raised foot, then carefully pivoted so he could put his foot down to the left of…Cesc. Whose huge eyes rapidly shrank into little slits of suspicion.

“We tried contacting Villa, but he’s not picking up. Also, Mori’s back and he says Villa’s not in any of the usual nearby sulking spots,” Cesc finally said. He glanced back at a noise, then shivered once and suddenly was human. And still leaning forward, closely searching Luís’ face as if Luís, of all people, was trouble. “Were you going to step on me?”

Yes, obviously, because ever since Mori had stormed in and made his announcement, fox-demons had been running all over the place, barking and yipping and just generally ignoring the fact that not _everybody_ saw the world at knee-height. For a couple moments it’d been so bad that Luís literally couldn’t move unless he wanted to kick furry little lumps out of the way, and they were already stirred up enough. “No. So what does that leave?”

Standing just a little past Cesc’s left shoulder, Zinedine examined a chalice that had been once been owned by Nostradamus. He poked at the rim while Iker hurried by with somebody’s kit dangling by the scruff from his mouth, then absently stepped back without looking. His foot tapped Iker—not that hard, but Iker was so startled that he dropped the kit, who immediately bumbled off to scuff at Zinedine’s foot.

“I don’t know. Villa’s always going off on his own instead of like, actually saying what’s the matter. We all just sort of let him go, since enough of us have tried and gotten our tails bitten off for just trying to be sympathetic,” Cesc muttered, scratching an ear and looking away.

Zinedine looked down. His brows angled towards his nose, but otherwise he didn’t show any expression as he tipped up his toes, lifting the fox-demon kit’s forepaws so it blinked fuzzily at him. Just behind the kit, Iker was tensed back on his haunches, his tail held stiffly out behind him.

“Cesc,” Raúl snapped, coming up from the right.

“What? It’s true. He’s been such an asshole lately, like it’s anybody’s fault that guess what, Mori’s been in love with you for centuries. Like it should be anybody’s fault at all. He’s just a jerk and you know, if the rat-demons eat him—”

Raúl looked at Cesc a little like he was torn between smacking the other demon upside the head and reluctantly agreeing. Then he blinked, shook his head, and turned to Luís. “Did you get hold of Gila and find out about David—” he put a very slight stress on the name “—Silva?”

Cesc flinched, then winced away so he happened to see Zinedine. And Iker, and the kit. And even though Cesc was still human, Luís could just about see the bristling ruff about the demon’s neck.

“I can’t remember Alberto’s number. It’s over there. In my desk. Which has been blocked from me by a sea of panicky foxes for the past five minutes,” Luís said. If Zinedine did make any threatening moves, Luís could trigger spells from where he was that’d smack away the hawk-demon before even Iker could react. But oddly enough, he didn’t think he’d need to.

The fox-kit raised a tiny paw towards Zinedine’s jeans-cuff and Zinedine swiveled his foot so the kit swung away from him. Then he gently tilted his shoe, making the uncoordinated kit slide off and roll over against Iker’s fore-legs. Iker instantly snatched up the mewling, protesting furball and scurried off as Zinedine watched, still expressionless.

“Sorry. Some of the dens are right over a sewer outlet, and we had to move up to the attic. It’s just for now, and I’m sorry I’m just mentioning it out, but…” Raúl stopped to rub at the bags already starting to form under his eyes “…I’m sorry. We’ll make it up to you.”

“What are you looking at?” Cesc asked Zinedine. His tone was barely on the right side of polite, and he hadn’t unset his shoulders either.

Zinedine shifted back to gaze at Cesc without actually seeming to move; it was like the world had just turned around him. He gave Cesc a look, bemused in the distant way a bird soaring above the tiny frantic ant-race of the world probably was. Then he shrugged and walked away from the chalice without answering. Cesc’s shoulders bunched up and for a moment Luís thought he’d have to stun _that_ demon, but thankfully, Cesc just huffed off in the other direction.

“But David—both of them. I really do need to know if they’re safe. Silva’s far too young and Villa’s actually never seen a swarm before. If it was just one or two, he’d be able to handle them, but swarms are different. And I’m not insulting his abilities, because he does have them. I mean, personally I wouldn’t want—”

“You know, you don’t really have to defend yourself to me. I don’t have an opinion about Villa either way,” Luís said, a little amused.

He was glad to see Raúl crack a smile, even if it was fleeting: Raúl sometimes seemed to have the whole weight of the world on his shoulders. Of course he was the tribal leader, but there were plenty of other experienced adults around, and anyway, effective leadership didn’t mean one had to personally account for every little tiff over whose turn it was to clean up the hairballs. Or, for that matter, all the damn little love-dramas. And Luís had thought that once Zlatan had reconciled with the fact that he was hopelessly in love with those angels, he’d never have to deal with that again.

“Of course. I didn’t—never mind.” Raúl’s expression went to apologetic and then to faintly ragged as he glanced over his shoulder. He put one hand on the back of his head, which he then pulled down as he tugged his hair. The corners of his mouth went back in a grimace, then flattened out. “Anyway.”

Luís checked the floor, then started for his desk. “No, I don’t mind about the attic. Just don’t touch the—”

“I know, Andrés and Xavi are taking turns watching that.”

“—so I called Zlatan and between us we couldn’t think of anything. Also apparently a rat-demon came up through their plumbing.” Once at the desk, Luís pulled open his drawer and made the usual face at the mess inside before he closed his eyes, concentrated hard, and then…pulled out the right slip of paper. Then he started to dial, but it occurred to him that at this point, he might as well have Alberto’s number on his Contacts List. Which was only two extra buttons to push, so he started doing that instead. “But I’ve got no idea about Villa.”

“Neither does Mori. Which I don’t know whether I should be relieved about or…never mind.” Raúl pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, muttering to himself. His ears rippled a little.

Cesc had finally wandered off, but Zinedine was still in the room and now checking out…oh, damn it, that genealogy was still on the wall. Well, it was too late to whip that away now, and…and Zinedine’s shoulders were shaking. As if possibly he were laughing, and now he was stretching out one arm to shift around a few of the lines.

Luís lowered the phone. “Raúl. What? And if you say never mind again, I’m not telling you what Alberto says. You’re awful when you’re trying to bottle something up.”

“Well, it’s not like I can blab about it like everyone else. They can gossip because somebody deals with the reality,” Raúl hissed with surprising vehemence. His head came up sharply and he jerked his hands vertically, then sideways as if trying to push something away from him. Then he sighed, covered his eyes, and started mumbling again. “No, you’re right. You usually—I had an argument with Mori. Over Villa. It was stupid and I need to apologize to Mori, only I can’t because I have to find _David Villa_ who I do actually want to seriously hurt right now. But I can’t. Because it’d be unreasonable.”

Zinedine was still correcting things on the walls, and one line in particular seemed to be giving him a problem as he tried to draw it around a snarl of others, only to always get stuck. Finally he stretched it nearly a meter off the wall, pulled it down to his knees and then stepped through the loop that was formed. As he did, Luís got a glimpse of his face and while it was still expressionless, it was a little different from before. Less like a humanlike mask and more like he just didn’t feel like anything at that moment.

“As an unbiased observer, I think I can say that you could have one hit and that would be completely reasonable,” Luís told Raúl. He glanced at the scrap of paper again, then dialed Alberto’s number. Hopefully they—Luís winced, wishing he hadn’t had that thought. And what it said about the state of his life that he could idly hope he didn’t call in the middle of sex…well, at the least, things should be the other way around. Honestly. “Don’t look at me like that. I am unbiased.”

“You sleep with me. And earlier,” Raúl said. He wasn’t smiling but he was definitely amused. “What was it? Something about…having a problem with Villa?”

Luís got the dial-tone, so at least Alberto’s phone wasn’t off or dead, like the other man tended to let happen near the end of the week. After checking for fox-eared shadows, Luís leaned back against the desk. He drummed his fingers along the edge, then pulled them away because he was annoying himself. Instead he lifted them and twiddled the nearest of Raúl’s ears. “What, earlier? _This_ earlier?”

Even before Luís’ hand was half-raised, Raúl was trying to intercept it. But not that hard, and the moment Luís touched that ear, Raúl’s eyes were nearly-shut and his lip was trembling from the effort needed to keep it stiff and straight. His hand did fall on Luís’ wrist, but so lightly it qualified as a caress. “Luís, this is really not fair. And phone.”

“Gila’s not picking up,” Luís said, leaning forward.

He was just about to nibble Raúl’s jawline when one, the ringing stopped and two, something flicked at the edge of Luís’ vision. Luís jerked back, then twisted around with the phone to his ear. “Alberto?”

Behind Raúl, Zinedine was still staring at them. Eyes narrowed, face a mask again, fingers slightly flexed. It wasn’t quite claws out, but maybe it was assessing the fit between those and the target.

Well, it wasn’t like Luís hadn’t warned him about it. Also, Luís really, deeply disliked the feeling that someone was not only judging him, but expecting him to care about the verdict. He’d seen more than enough to know what he truly wanted out of life and what he was willing to pay for it—and had paid, on occasion—and knew that for all that, he actually had to listen to very few people. Demons. Entities. Anyway, he wasn’t convinced that Zinedine was one of them, potential in-law or not.

And to be honest, the demon just annoyed him. So Luís shrugged, staring right back, and gave Raúl’s ear a last stroke before taking down his hand. Zinedine’s brows went up before he turned back around.

Raúl had glanced over his shoulder as well, but now he shot Luís a slanted look. “Is that a good idea?”

“Hello?” Luís said into the phone, suddenly realizing he hadn’t heard anything from the other end. Then he rolled his eyes at Raúl. “What, you don’t think you’re pretty enough for him to care?”

For a moment, Raúl just looked at him. The ears slightly flattened back. “He’s not your affianced, Luís. He doesn’t really have to. Though he’s not bad-looking himself, actually.”

Still no answer. “Alberto? Gila?” Luís waited a moment. “Gianluigi? Look, somebody picked up, so I know somebody’s there.” Then he glowered at Raúl. “Goddamn it, do you lot always have to do that?”

“Do you have to use me for that when I’m already having problems with Mori?” Raúl replied, tone edged. Then he grimaced, turning away. “Damn it. Ignore me, I’m going—”

Luís grabbed him back, then snapped an arm around Raúl’s waist to keep him there. Because Raúl was right, and more than pretty, and goddamn it, sometimes Luís could be an ass himself. Though, he thought as he kissed Raúl with every bit of appreciation in him, he did make up for it. One way or the other.

“I am so happy to have somebody else around here who can tell people to grow up,” Luís murmured, slowly pulling back. He let his tongue slide across Raúl’s soft mouth, then pecked the corner of that. “And that has nothing to do with whoever the hell is watching this. God. It’s a good thing I don’t mind that at all.”

“I hear Cesc cheering somewhere,” Raúl snorted. His lashes grazed Luís’ cheek, and then he dropped his head away and to the side, his cheek rasping on Luís’ stubble. He stayed like that for another moment before he backed up. “Villa. There are still a few places we haven’t checked, but they’re…far. I’m going to make sure things are settled there, then go out.”

“Come back and get me. It’s probably the only way I’m getting to the bottom of this anyway.” Luís let the demon go, then braced his hip against the desk again.

Nobody had answered the phone yet, but Luís could hear a steady scraping noise so he settled back to wait. He idly looked around the room and of course Zinedine was there, looking back. When their gazes met, Zinedine lifted his chin slightly, then shook his head. One side of his mouth was quirked.

“You’re actually fond of them,” he said. His tone was not quite neutral, but it was impossible to make out what that flicker of emotion was. Could’ve been surprise, irritation, approval, any number of things. “Them. The whole tribe. Not just the…ones you have uses for.”

“I think ‘uses’ is putting it a little crudely.” Then Luís flinched as a sharp clatter came over the line. But he could hear muffled voices beyond that, so somebody was definitely home.

Zinedine shrugged. “You’re a mage. How else do you think of demons?”

“I don’t know, as irritating nuisances who hog all the blankets and clog my vacuum with fur? When they’re not moaning about the terrible, terrible burden of having to fuck gorgeous clingy angels? How do _you_ think of people? Any different?” Luís lifted his own eyebrows, then turned away as Alberto’s voice finally crackled in his ear. He did glimpse Zinedine just about gaping, but unfortunately couldn’t enjoy it. He had foxes to track down and swarms to kill.

* * *

“David Silva? Is he here?” Alberto repeated, eyes darting from David to Gianluigi and then to random parts of the room. The man squirmed a little, pulling at his hair. “Ah…”

He was trying to stall and not doing a very good job of it, but it was still a nice thing for him to do. And thoughtful, which made it clear that Cesc was right and ‘Nando was wrong about how smart Alberto was. Maybe he didn’t act like a genius, but then, the ones who did weren’t always the ones David could stand to be around. Well, except for—David grimaced, then tried to push that thought away and pay attention to what was going on where he could…could do something. Be listened to, anyway. “Figo wants to know where I am? Why?”

“Hang…can you hang on for a moment? I just heard something in the other room and I’m going to see what it is.” The effort of lying made Alberto screw up his face and even get a little bit of a sweaty gleam on his forehead, and when he jammed his phone into the side of the mattress, he let out a huge sigh. Alberto sagged back against the bed and took another gigantic breath, and only then did he look at David. “He says there’s an emergency and they need to know where everyone is. He didn’t say what it was, but he does sound a little…um, mad. I think.”

“Oh, well, go ahead and tell him I’m here. I shouldn’t even be here anyway, and I don’t want anybody to worry over me,” David said. He sat back, then got up again as Alberto started repeating that to the phone. Then he paused, but when he figured out that Gianluigi was only going to glare at him and not actually smash him, he hopped up into Alberto’s lap to hear better.

*…needs to stay there till somebody calls again. And you shouldn’t go out either—I just heard from Zlatan and they have them coming up the pipes. Nobody seems to know what’s going on, but it’s a decent guess that they’re going after power sinks.*

Gianluigi switched his glower to the phone at that point, and also toned it down a little. Alberto was too busy trying to listen to Figo to notice, but Gianluigi’s hands had just grabbed pretty hard at his waist. “Power sink?” Alberto uncertainly repeated.

*Look, just stay inside. If anything sounds funny in the plumbing, let Gianluigi deal with it. He should—*

“What’s coming up the plumbing?” David asked. Was there another near-apocalypse going on? If they were so worried that they wanted to know where all the fox-demons were, then…“Wait! Is Guaje still gone? Did he come back? Ask him! Ask him!”

David didn’t notice he was jumping till huge hands suddenly clamped around him, jerking his paws off Alberto’s shoulder. That got Alberto’s attention and he jerked about so hard he nearly dropped the phone, then reached out for David. Who got rattled a bit as the hands froze, then let go so he plopped back into Alberto’s lap.

“Don’t _scratch_ him,” Gianluigi finally muttered. He almost-glanced at Alberto as he levered himself to his feet, his scarily long legs taking up so much space as they unfolded that David checked to see if any extra ones had popped out. Then he went still, his upper body not yet straightened up, because Alberto had tugged at his sleeve. He looked at Alberto at that point, his expression softening—a _lot_ , till he actually had one—before he dropped his eyes. “I’m going to look at the bathroom and see if there’s anything. Then I’ll do the kitchen.”

“Do you need anything, or can you take care of it by yourself? Not that…because I’ll probably fuck it up, but um…” Alberto glanced around, then rolled his eyes at himself a beat before his hand hit his face “…I don’t know what I’m looking for. Just…be careful?”

Gianluigi tilted his head to the left a little, then tipped it more as he bent back down and kissed Alberto’s temple. “They’re rat-demons. As long as you don’t mind, I have no difficulty in delivering them back to whatever part of Hell spawned them.”

Personally, David wouldn’t have found that particularly reassuring, but Alberto seemed to like it. At any rate, the man visibly relaxed. He let go of Gianluigi’s sleeve and leaned back; his eyebrows twitched once and then he groaned and smacked the phone back against his ear. “Luís? Sorry about that. What were you saying?”

*Silva needs to stay put with you. We don’t know what’s causing this and till we do, it’ll be safer that way.*

“But what about _Guaje_?” David said, jumping again. He couldn’t help it; he’d heard about rat-demon swarms from the older foxes, and seen some of the scars, and he thought they sounded terrifying. And Guaje probably was still out, thinking things over, and normally he could handle everything but when Mori was involved he—he got all weird. And couldn’t think straight, and didn’t pay attention to things at all and he could get into serious trouble. “Where is he? Does he know—oof!”

David’s knees banged hard against the floor as he tumbled over, shocked at the sudden transformation. His feet hit the bed and his arm smacked something that moved, so it was probably Alberto, so David rolled the other way as quickly as possible. He got up onto his hands and knees, rubbing at the sore spots, and then looked up to apologize. Except he’d gotten turned around and was facing the doorway, where Gianluigi was looming. Flinching, David backed up and nudged Alberto again; he used that to turn the right way.

“Sorry. But Guaje?” David asked.

Alberto looked okay, just sort of big-eyed, but he looked like that a lot. He blinked, started to speak, and then frowned at the phone. “What? Oh…oh, but…um. No, yeah, I got it. David, Figo says nobody knows where he is but they’re looking, they’ve checked the nearest areas and they’re going to check everywhere else. So don’t worry about it. They’re going to—Figo says he’s going out in a second to help look.”

“Oh.” David sat back. His left knee still hurt and he pushed at it with his hand while Alberto continued to talk quietly with Figo. It made sense. It _was_ hard to find Guaje when he didn’t want to be found, and anyway sometimes when he was really mad, he’d move as soon as he heard somebody coming for him. He probably was like that right now, so—“No! No, listen, he doesn’t know about the rat-demons, does he? You don’t know what Guaje’s like. He won’t see what they are, he’ll just keep shifting and he’ll end up in trouble. Plus if it’s Raúl who’s looking for him, or Mori, that’ll just get him more upset and oh, he’s just not gonna _listen_. Not to _them_.”

And suddenly David knew where to go. He leaped onto the bed, changing mid-air, and kept on running till he’d gotten to the other side. Then he jumped down and melted into the shadows around the balcony door, following them outside. He didn’t know if Guaje would listen to him either, but he did know that he could surprise the other demon by showing up quick enough, and maybe, just maybe, he could get a second. Long enough to tell him about the rat-demons, at least. He hoped. And ran, down the side of the building and then underground.

* * *

Zlatan snarled and flung his phone from him, then irritably caught it as it boomeranged back. Later he’d be impressed with himself for coming up with that spell and not having to replace any more phones, but right now he was just annoyed. “The damn line’s still busy. What the fuck is Figo doing? Twiddling ears?”

Sandro…didn’t go round Figo’s place with Gila often enough to understand that. Judging from the way he pinched his nose and closed his eyes. “What?”

“Oh, forget it,” Zlatan muttered. He snapped shut the phone. Then he flipped it open again, but had a thought and instead of redialing, followed that thought. “You know what, he said he’d be late anyway. Let’s go.”

He turned and walked nearly to the door before he realized no footsteps were following him. Rolling his eyes at heaven—yeah, he was _that_ annoyed—Zlatan spun around. “ _What_?”

Sandro wrinkled up his nose and gestured towards the damp towel around his waist. “I need to dress.”

“What?” Paolo said, coming through the door. He stopped just inside, holding a bottle of homemade drain cleaner and looking very confused. “What? Going where?”

And he wasn’t dressed either, but was still in that bedsheet. For a moment, Zlatan just took in the sight. But then he gave himself a shake, pulled his tongue back into his mouth, and ignored Sandro’s contemptuous noises. “Sandro figured out what’s up with the swarms and I know where to go to take care of it. I tried to call Figo to let him know, but his line’s busy and anyway, he’s got foxes to find. So I’m gonna take care of it.”

“Wait, let me get dressed—”

“That’s what I said—”

Zlatan covered his face with his hand. “Okay, look, I am waiting _five_ minutes. There are _rat-demons_ in the goddamn sewers and they have fucked with my shower and interrupted my evening fuck—” what might’ve been an embarrassed sound came from Paolo’s direction “—and I want to get this over with. Five. Minutes.”

When Zlatan looked up, Paolo was staring back with a puzzled expression, like he wasn’t quite sure if he needed to be offended. “All right,” he shrugged.

Sandro at least got the point, even if he made it clear he’d like to cram it back into Zlatan’s mouth. “All we need to do is put on a shirt and trousers each, so why you think you can—”

“…Sandro? You were out last, weren’t you? What’s the weather like…oh, it’s the sewers so probably…jeans? Mmm…this one might do, or…”

Zlatan would’ve been able to pull a better triumphant face if he hadn’t also been cringing at the same time. And well, Sandro’s expression abruptly shifted to one full of pained, uncomprehending resignation with which Zlatan totally agreed. Which was weird in and of itself, even if it’d been happening a lot more since Gianluigi had fallen. But still.

“Just pick one,” Sandro sighed, turning around. “Paolo, please, just…whatever you’re holding.”

Stifling a sigh, Zlatan took up a position against the wall. He hated to admit Sandro could do anything better than him, but in this case, it really was true. Unless…

“Sandro, aren’t those a little thin? If they get wet, they’ll stretch into holes right away.”

“Oh. Right. I’ll get another pair—now where are my woolen ones?”

Zlatan put his head back in his hands.

* * *

“Damn it,” Luís exhaled, finally hanging up. He rubbed at his eyes and then at his temples. “Gila says he just ran off. And Alberto almost ran off, too, but Gianluigi has enough sense to realize that they’d just get in the way. So they’re staying put, but they have no clue where David Silva went to.”

“Villa.” When Luís looked down, Cesc was in human form but still down on the floor, sitting with his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around his legs. His ears were drooping, but his hands were clenched into fists. “He’s going after that fucking idiot. Oh, I swear, if anything happens to—”

“Nothing will,” Raúl firmly said. He walked by, one of Luís’ tennis rackets under his arm, and gave Cesc a sharp look as he passed the other demon.

Cesc seemed unconvinced, but he eeled up onto his feet and then fell in behind Raúl with an uncharacteristic lack of eyerolling. Raúl paused at the door, but Cesc just melted right into the shadows and slipped under the bottom.

“I’ll be down right after. I just need to get my coat.” Luís stuffed his phone into his pocket and picked up his shotgun from the desk, then checked to make sure the safety was on. Then he stepped into the hallway to briefly check with Iker, who apparently was holding things down while Raúl was out—oddly enough, Mori didn’t seem to be anywhere near, or going out with Raúl. Just how bad a fight had it been?

Though when Luís came back with his coat and his duffel bag, Raúl had vanished as well and so that question would have to wait. What wasn’t, however, was Zinedine, who was casually walking up beside Luís with his hands in his pockets. He waited for Luís to get the door, then went through first. And promptly started as something on the dark landing barked at him.

Luís grinned as he locked the door, then waited so Cesc could claw up onto his shoulder. The fox-demon curled his tail over the back of Luís’ neck for balance and that tickled rather persistently, so Luís carefully pulled up his coat-collar so it was between his skin and the tail. He could hear Raúl pattering along somewhere behind, but then the noise stopped and instead the shadows around his feet began to stretch and then snap back, as if something were forcing through them.

“So where are you going?” Zinedine asked. He spoke a little oddly, like before. It was like he hadn’t quite transformed his voicebox into human form, so he needed an extra effort to get out the words.

Raúl got the back door so Luís just had to catch its swing before it banged into the wall—a little breezy now—and then they were out into the alley. There he glimpsed something large and furry whisking around a corner, and at the same time, Raúl suddenly popped into solidity to stare in that direction, ears pulled back. Then the demon turned away, head a little low, and collapsed back into shadows as he disappeared down the sewer drain.

Unfortunately he didn’t get that, so it was a good thing Luís kept a crowbar outside for dealing with delivery crates. “Villa’s got two more places he’s gone to before when he’s been upset, apparently. One’s near a butcher’s shop and the other’s a park.”

“You’re not going to stop the swarming first?” For some reason, Zinedine seemed surprised by this, as if he hadn’t been standing around for the past couple hours listening to them snipe and snarl at each other. “Is that sensible?”

“Zlatan said he’s going after the broodmother no matter what I do, and he’ll get her. It looks like the swarm’s still in the early stages, so we have some time.” Luís knelt down and examined the drain cover, then began to insert the crowbar under one edge. Then he frowned and looked up as a shadow fell over him.

Zinedine squatted out, holding out two crooked fingers that now ended in very large, sharp talons. He inserted their tips under the cover, then flipped his wrist and sent the cover clattering off to the side. Then he leaned forward a little, his eyes narrowing, but not so quickly that Figo couldn’t see them going to gold. “Really.”

Cesc muttered something rude and Luís hitched his shoulders in surprise, abruptly reminded of the fox-demon, then put up a hand to rebalance Cesc. Who nipped his fingers, and came much closer to getting turned into a fried ball of fur than he probably would ever realize; luckily for him, Luís was a little more concerned about the lack of Raúl than he was about explaining to Cesc that there was a time and a place for being snippy, and it wasn’t anywhere near here. So instead Luís checked out the sewer with a flashlight, and when he didn’t see anything untoward, handed the light off to Cesc—something useful the fox-demon could do with his mouth—and swung himself down into the hole.

A little too late, it occurred to him that being polite enough to have Zinedine go first probably would’ve been a better strategy. Instead of hanging off a rung about halfway into a dark, smelly, rat-demon-infested sewer while the hawk-demon who didn’t really like him was up above with the manhole cover.

Luís looked up. Zinedine looked back down, his head slightly to the side, expression blank again. His shoulders twitched and Luís clenched his hands on the bar, and then suddenly it went pitch-black.

Then back to dim, but the difference was so striking that Luís found himself squinting at the yellowish glare from the streetlights. Something flapped near his ear and he started, then twisted to the side to get out of the way. Then he swore as he felt the flashlight tumble down his side and then bounce off his hip. Too late, Luís made a grab for it, lost his damn balance and just had to jump the rest of the way down.

It wasn’t that far, well within the safe range, but at his age his knees really would’ve preferred a nice, gradual descent. For a couple moments Luís just stayed bent over, pressing the heels of his hands into the sides of his knees and gritting his teeth. Cesc was babbling something in his ear that sounded like an apology, but Luís ignored it in favor of the fact that the flashlight wasn’t making any noise at all.

Or hadn’t, and that was explained when a man-size circle of light suddenly appeared on the far wall. It held still for a moment, then began to move, and as it did, it shrunk in size till it was about a meter across and three meters ahead of Luís. He traced the beam back to a hand, and then back to Zinedine, who was grimacing and rubbing or picking at his shoulder…Luís edged along the narrow walkway till he had a better angle, then understood that Zinedine had…ripped his shirt? Part of his collar was flapping. Then it snagged on his hand and got pushed up to where it almost blocked the wary look he shot over his shoulder.

The weight on Luís’ shoulder vanished, and a second later a Cesc with cockily-perked ears and glowing green eyes was casually brushing by Zinedine. “Little problem with the dark? You guys aren’t known for your night-sight, are you?”

Zinedine took a step back, but not at all because Cesc’s ridiculous little posturing actually got to him. Actually, that might’ve been the closest to an amused look Luís had yet seen on the demon’s face. “No. We aren’t.”

Cesc stopped, blinking. After a moment he shook his head and went another step, but while still looking puzzled. Then he shrugged again and kept going, his nose slightly tipped up as he whiffed the air. He paused a third time before waving towards the left. “Raúl went that way. Kind of in a hurry. Um.”

“Well, we’d better get moving too,” Luís muttered. Before Cesc could waste more time being surprised, Luís resettled his duffel strap on his shoulder and strode forward.

Thankfully, Zinedine forewent the next impending conflict and started walking at the same time, saving Luís the trouble of wrestling the flashlight back from him. And he did seem to need the flashlight, which was…odd in a demon: the fox-demons went around in the dark the same as in the light, and Zlatan took great delight in scaring the hell out of people by randomly wandering in without turning on the lights. Someday that idiot was really going to get a crossbow bolt to the head, and Luís was not going to apologize while he was pulling it back out.

They went on in silence for a couple minutes. As usual, Cesc displayed surprisingly good timing despite his impatience and didn’t get too far ahead that Luís needed to chase him down and shake some sense into him. And…possibly the situation was getting to Luís.

“If you did stop the swarming first, then you could look for the missing one without having to be so careful,” Zinedine abruptly said. He didn’t glance at Luís and did keep the flashlight a reasonable distance ahead of them, without flicking it off to check out every single strange noise that echoed through the place.

“But I’d be worrying about Villa and the others, and then there’s always the chance that the rat-demons might get to one of them while I’m off killing the broodmother. Which, like I mentioned, is already being seen to by Zlatan. Who’s perfectly capable of dealing with that.” The flashlight’s beam crossed a heap of something and Luís grabbed Zinedine’s wrist without thinking.

Zinedine went very still and very quiet, to the point that if Luís hadn’t been holding onto him and looking at his hand, Luís wouldn’t have known that the demon was still there. And then Luís looked up and found himself staring into a pair of fierce golden eyes. Even if Zinedine couldn’t see that well—were hawks nocturnal? Luís reminded himself to look into that—he still could give the impression that he could rip one to shreds.

Then again, so could Zlatan. When he wasn’t succumbing to angels cuddling up to him or dirty looks by fox-demons ten or so times smaller than him. “I want to look at that,” Luís said, and let go of Zinedine’s arm.

The light shifted over, but Zinedine’s eyes didn’t. It did take a moment for Luís to look away, and he was annoyed about that. But he managed to push it out of his mind when he saw the size of the rat-demon spoor on the ground. Swarm it certainly was. Actually, it was large enough for Luís to spend a moment wondering if he should call Zlatan…no, he’d seen Zlatan eat bigger things. Not by that much, but still, bigger was bigger.

“That’s impressive,” Zinedine observed, in a tone that indicated he wasn’t in the least overwhelmed. Annoyance, however, was a distinct possibility. “So were your defenses, but there is the chance the swarm might overcome them while you’re out looking for one runaway.”

“There’s also the chance that I might come across the broodmother first and have to kill her anyway to find Villa,” Luís snapped. His calf began to hurt, and after a moment he realized that he was angrily tapping the end of the crowbar against that. So he stopped and instead looked about for Cesc, who’d gone to scout out the next turn and hadn’t yet returned. “Look, if you’re so concerned about my house, you can go back and watch it. If you think my plan is stupid…well, you’re free to say so. But I’m going to ignore you.”

Zinedine didn’t actually move, but somehow he seemed taller. Or maybe it was just that he finally was using his superior height to accentuate his contempt. “All I’m here to do is to see what you’re like and how you’re likely to behave around demons.”

“Good for you. You do that, and I’m going to…Cesc, don’t run that far.” Luís gratefully rounded on the fox-demon, whose ears and tail shot into defensive positions. A moment later Cesc was human and trying to explain something about urine and smell, but Luís was too damn frustrated. For God’s sake, he was human. “Where’s Raúl? Where the hell are we going?”

“Did he piss you off?” Cesc asked, scrambling after Luís. He nearly ran off the edge into the sewage because he was looking over his shoulder at Zinedine. “Why are you so mad now?”

Mostly Luís grabbed Cesc’s arm for the fox-demon’s own good, but okay, it was also because they were a little ahead of the flashlight and Cesc could see where Luís couldn’t. “Slow down. I don’t want to get dirtier than I have to. I like these shoes.”

“Those?” Cesc glanced down, now slowed to a trot, and then snorted. “Um, Figo, even the kits won’t chew on that pair, they smell so bad…okay, you’re not in the mood. So we’re going to the butcher’s shop first, and I don’t know why Raúl’s running ahead but we haven’t lost him. He’s just not—answering me. And why is everyone being an asshole today?”

Luís started to snarl at him, but a fortuitous stumble temporarily used up his breath. He only needed a moment to right himself, but human or not, he was a little better than some so-called immortals at figuring out when he was just plain losing it. And…well, now even he could smell rat-demons, so he’d get a chance to take out his frustrations on those soon enough. No point in wasting them on Cesc, who didn’t deserve _all_ of it. “I don’t know. When I woke up this morning I thought it was going to be a really good day. I’d scored a great buy, and online of all places.”

For a couple seconds Cesc just padded alongside Luís, making enough noise for Luís to know the demon was deliberately doing that. “…Figo? You bought that book _online_? But you always said—”

“I know, I know, it was goddamn stupid.” A dim spot in the general blackness began to emerge ahead of them, so Luís stopped where he was and stuffed the crowbar under his arm for safekeeping, then unzipped his duffel. He had to rummage around a bit before he found the right spray-can. “But it was a membership-only forum. And a first-edition, with an authenticated record of provenance going back six hundred years.”

The silence from Cesc’s direction was distinctly incredulous.

And damn it, but Luís only _wished_ he’d forgotten Zinedine was behind them. “You bought a marriage proposal for my tribe _online_? Just what sort of values do you have?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” Zlatan wasn’t normally an influence on Luís, but Luís had to admit that sometimes the demon’s way of expression was extremely satisfying. “I’m a book-dealer, all right? I dream about scoop-of-the-century bargains like that. Like what I thought I was getting, anyway—and no, it’s not what I thought, and I’m not any happier than you are. I have a _nice life_ the way it _is_ and I don’t want to get married to some—some demon just because I got mouse-happy.”

“You have a mouse-demon too?”

Luís stood there, his mouth slack and open, staring down into the hand that he couldn’t really see. He could, however, hear the top of the spray-can creaking under the force of his grip. “No! I live with fox-demons! And—and do you even know what a computer is? Or are you one of those damn morons who hasn’t been out of Hell in the past century?”

“You’re kind of stuffy,” Cesc added.

God knew what Zinedine’s face looked like, but God was the only one who probably cared about that right then. Since Luís didn’t, and that would’ve been true even if part of the darkness hadn’t suddenly changed in texture and developed huge red eyes and a huge pair of gnashing incisors.

Grossly oversized, foaming at the mouth, the rat-demon launched itself at Luís. So Luís took advantage of the gaping mouth and spritzed down into it, then whacked the demon aside with the crowbar just as it began to flame up. It flew across the stream of sewage into the far wall, already flaking apart, but the internal fire managed to devour most of the rat-demon before the pieces could develop into anything. A few still did manage to grow feet and attempted to scurry away, but a smaller shadow detached itself from the wall and efficiently pounced on them. Raúl dispatched each normal-sized rat-demon with a stiff paw that broke their backs before he went over to cautiously inspect the larger corpse.

“That smells like mayonnaise,” Zinedine remarked.

“It’s holy water, angelica and oil. And egg yolks, so it stays emulsified and I don’t have to shake the damn can every time I want to use it.” Luís scraped off the crowbar on the edge of the walkway, then handed it to Cesc. While the fox-demon was looking confusedly at it, Luís pulled out a tennis racket from his duffel before zipping up the bag. Then he gave the mesh a quick spray and stood up again. “Like I said a minute ago, I’m a book-dealer. I don’t have the time or interest in getting fancy.”

Zinedine was close enough so that Luís could make out a little of his expression, which appeared to be slightly…defensive. “I never said anything about your profession. And I do know what a computer is. Your desktop is about five years old, isn’t it?”

“It works fine, thank you,” Luís muttered, abruptly turning away. As he did, he glimpsed Zinedine jerking his head back, eyebrows up, but the demon could be surprised or critical or whatever he liked. Luís…

…Luís had lost Raúl again: the fox-demon had gone off while he and Zinedine had been exchanging snipes. Great. And from the guilty look on Cesc’s face, _that_ fox-demon had been avidly watching the fight instead of looking after the important things.

“Sorry, this way,” Cesc mumbled. He ducked his head as he took a couple steps, then left the crowbar clattering behind him as he transformed and bounded after Raúl.

“I was just mentioning how old your computer is.” Before Luís could get to it, Zinedine picked up the crowbar. He managed to do it without breaking his stride or looking particularly cramped about the extreme lack of room, and on a better day, Luís would’ve been genuinely impressed. “So were the fox-demons similar accidents?”

Luís did consider just not talking to the demon, and quite seriously, which said something about the length of his temper that didn’t really bode well. But in the end, he decided that that would be immature, ineffective and possibly even dangerous. So far…Zinedine had been fairly reticent, his superior attitude aside, but he had had an aggressive moment. And down here, Luís didn’t have the home ground advantage. “Similar, no. Accidents…” damn Luís’ tendencies towards honesty “…I didn’t call them up or go out of my way to run across them. We met during something Zla—that didn’t have anything to do with either of us, frankly.”

“Then why do you still have them?” Zinedine asked.

“I don’t _have_ them. They just like stealing my blankets, and I can’t keep myself from…from cleaning up those disgusting hairballs and buying extra chickens. It’s something about those damn ears. I thought I’d figured out how to block it, but…” At some point Luís realized he was getting a little too personal and clammed up. It wasn’t subtle, but he’d gone a bit too far to segue into a different topic, and Zinedine was watching too closely for him to backtrack. “Cesc?”

A faint yip drifted back towards them. Then it sounded twice more, till Luís thought he was close enough to make out the fox-demon, but just at that moment came the scuffing of feet going _away_ from him. When they got done with this, Luís was going to sit Cesc and Raúl down and explain a couple things about over-anxiety and tunnel vision.

“I don’t think I understand.” When Luís looked over, Zinedine was furrowing his brows and scratching at his head. Which he did in an odd way, the arm just a little too stiff and thrown wide to be normal. “What’s the bargain with them? What…how do you keep them around?”

“I…have sex with some of them? And pet the rest of them? And they seem to enjoy it? I don’t think I understand either,” Luís said after a moment. “I don’t have a bargain. They stay and I don’t mind. Most of the time.”

Zinedine took down his arm, but lifted his head so the shadows sharpened his nose into nothing but the long bony bridge. “How can you have no bargain? They’re demons. You’re a mage.”

“Okay, strictly speaking, I’m a book-dealer with unusual hobbies and Zlatan for a friend. And I can have no bargain because…I have no bargain. Why would I need a bargain? It’s not like I want them bound in service to me, and they don’t want that either.” Another wave of rat-demon stench suddenly swept over them and Luís immediately stopped, squinting into the darkness. But when he realized he could hear two fox-demons chirping to each other, he resumed walking; it seemed that the swarm had already passed by here and had headed elsewhere. “What, is that your problem? I thought you’d looked into me.”

“I did. And you have a contract with a swan-maiden, Zlatan and Henrik regularly intervening on your behalf in demonic disputes, and an entire demon tribe in residence.” The beam of light swayed a bit as Zinedine tugged awkwardly at his torn collar. “By itself it looks…odd.”

Well, Luís supposed it did. And also he was a little more understanding about Zlatan’s rants about the backwardness and stupidity of other demons—he had been sympathetic in the first place, but to be honest, it was a little hard to take Zlatan seriously on demons’ inabilities to understand humans when it took Luís about three hours to explain why Gila might get twitchy at Zlatan randomly materializing behind him. On the other hand, Zinedine had been around for several hours now, and he had to have realized things were different the first time Cesc opened his mouth.

“So you don’t intend to bind them to you? Ever?” Zinedine asked.

“No. That’s not how I…look. I do magic because it’s useful, because it’s fun, because…because it keeps demons from getting idiotic ideas about me long enough for me to convince them that it’s more mutually beneficial to just get a coffee together. I don’t do it because I want to rule the world. Or even just my own bookshop.” It’d been a while since Luís had actually seen Cesc or Raúl, Luís abruptly realized. He could still hear their voices, but they’d gotten a lot more distant and he wasn’t quite sure anymore that he could figure out from which direction they were coming. Damn it. “Though I’ll admit, I’m damn tempted at times.”

Zinedine stopped when Luís stopped, then stood back to watch Luís dig around in his duffel. “Then why don’t you ever act on it?”

Luís paused, his hand nearly touching what he needed. Then he looked up, and the sigh he let out was both because of Zinedine’s continuing obtuseness and because his fingers had just slipped off. “Because I _like_ them. You don’t enslave your friends. Not when you still want them to be your friends.”

“I…” Zinedine blinked “…you _like_ them?”

This time, Luís got a good hold on it before he looked up and indulged in an eye-roll. “You remind me a lot of someone. Which just goes to show that denseness doesn’t take sides, even in the Eternal War. All right, now that we’ve got that cleared up, can I—”

“ _Figo_!”

* * *

After he left Alberto’s place, David made a beeline for the park. It was closer than the butcher’s shop or the high-end shopping mall, and anyway, when Guaje was really depressed he usually didn’t want to be around anything that made noise at all. Even at night, the butcher’s shop and the mall were still in a pretty busy district, but the park had little nooks where it almost seemed like you were on another planet, it was so quiet.

To be honest, it made David fidgety and nervous, but Guaje really seemed to like it. Not that David had ever asked, since obviously if Guaje wanted to be alone, he wouldn’t have appreciated David barging in, even if it was to make him feel better. If David could do that at all.

David paused and pulled his head out of the shadows to sniff the air, then merged back and hurried onwards. It did smell very strongly of rat-demons, but so far he hadn’t heard anything or seen any actual signs, so hopefully they hadn’t come this way. And he was almost at the park. Guaje was going to be mad, and maybe Alberto and Figo were going to be too, but somebody had to warn Guaje. And that was all David was going to do. He’d just like, yell and Guaje’s ears would prick up, and then maybe Guaje would look at him before he could run off because he always got kind of clumsy around the other demon, and—

\--okay, even David was embarrassed to admit how silly his thoughts were getting. After all, this was a really serious situation and it was no time to be mooning over Guaje. Especially since everybody and their kits knew who Guaje was mooning over by now.

…it was sort of mean, but David just didn’t see it. He’d tried and tried, till his head had ached so much that he’d had to go see Figo for some medicine, because if Guaje loved Mori that much, then David kind of had to love the wolf-demon too. But he didn’t get it.

“He’s a nice _demon_ ,” David muttered as he eeled through a crack and onto the street. He absently checked for cars, then scooted his butt across the road and into a big bush before anybody saw him. “And I guess he’s good-looking, and he’s cheerful and everything, but…”

Well, honestly, and David was really trying not to be jealous or anything…Mori could be kind of dumb. Not like, idiotic so Figo sighed and made faces at him, or stupid as in he couldn’t figure out how to get the can-opener to work without changing back into human form. Just…well, like with the can-opener. He could just change human, whir the can through the machine and then dump the doggie food—which David privately thought was really gross, and when they could just grab a pigeon off the windowsill—into his bowl. But no, Mori had to amble around and poke with his paws and get a toe nipped and…and actually, Raúl had been watching and for once had been smiling, so maybe Mori hadn’t just been acting silly right then.

But he could be, and Guaje was even more intense than Raúl. So maybe he was just looking for his opposite, but then…

“I’m silly. Everybody says so. Oh…hopeless, hopeless.” David sniffed at an interesting scent coming from the base of a tree, but it turned out to just be somebody’s dog, so he kept on going. Then he caught a whiff of Guaje’s scent and bounded forward without thinking.

Wincing, David caught himself, then made himself slink through the grass. And promptly bumped into a really fat and slow pigeon who hit his nose twice with a wing and who didn’t flee till he smacked it with a paw. And even then, the thing ran instead of taking off. It kind of tempted David to eat it out of sheer pique, but Guaje. Right. His scent was getting a lot stronger a lot faster, so David would have to be even more careful, or else Guaje might move off before David could get in a word.

But damn it, the only real thing that Mori seemed to have on David was size, and—and that wasn’t everything. Which was so stupid-sounding, and sometimes David wished he didn’t spend so much time around Cesc. He was pretty sure he was blushing under his fur.

Besides, Mori and Raúl were settled. They’d been through shit so epic that there was an actual chronicle about it somewhere in Hell’s library, and they were still together. They were good together, too, and even Maman and Raúl’s kits loved Mori. So it wasn’t like Guaje…had a…

David shook himself again, then firmly told himself not to think about that stuff anymore. It wasn’t good for him and it didn’t change anything for him, either. Not to mention he was almost to the little fountain where Guaje liked to sit.

When he was at the edge, David dropped all the way onto his belly and wriggled the rest of the way, trying to disturb the grass as much as possible. At the same time he tried to see over their tops to catch any glimpse of—and yeah, that was fur. Then a tail, slowly swishing from side to side…wait a minute. The tail was right, but the fur wasn’t. Wrong color, too dirty and rough-looking, and also too…far…away.

“Guaje!” David screamed, jumping out. “Run!”

Guaje twisted about on the rim of the fountain, looking all annoyed and puzzled. And downwind of him, that rat-demon just kept on rising out of the larger pool into which the fountain poured, its fiery eyes fixed on Guaje.

Of course David was running, and by then he’d worked up enough momentum to leap the rest of the way. He hit Guaje in the chest and knocked them both into the fountain just as something smashed down on the rim where Guaje had been sitting.

The water was _cold_. It burned up David’s nostrils and wormed icily into his ears, and so he came up sneezing and vigorously shaking his head. Then he remembered the rat-demon and looked frantically about, only to get dragged under the surface before he even had time to yelp. He kicked like crazily, hit something, and then frantically paddled for the surface, coming up near the spout. It was a tiered thing and David managed to hook his paws over the edge of the lowest level, then to pull himself up. Then he looked again. “Guaje?”

No rat-demon. No—white froth churned up right below David, then threw up a wet, disgusted-looking Guaje. He got up onto the tier next to David, then started pawing at his right ear. “You nearly knocked off my head.”

“Oh-- _oh_. I’m so sorry, Guaje, I thought you were the rat-demon—oh! Guaje! They’re swarming! In the sewers! And—”

Guaje held his paw over David’s mouth for another moment, still squinting in pain. Then he took it off, sneezed, and opened one eye. “What? What about rat-demons?”

“They’re swarming! And it was going to eat you, and I was so afraid I came to warn you, and Guaje, we gotta go. They’re swarming and ack, where’d it go? Where’d it go?” David whipped his head around, searching the surrounding area, but still didn’t see the rat-demon. He didn’t get it; that thing had been _huge_. Way too big, and all lumpy like it had warts under its skin, and with the big teeth…but it wasn’t anywhere. “It…it was…”

“What’s ‘it’?” Guaje asked a little more pointedly. He looked at David, and when David could do nothing but gape at him, sighed and shook himself from head to tail-tip. “Oh, look, David. I’m fine, I’ll come home in the morning, but right now I just—don’t want to talk about it.”

“I…I know. I didn’t come to bother you again, but…but Guaje, where are you going? There are rat-demons!” David started after the other fox-demon, but his paw slipped and he fell. Not that hard, but it slowed him so that he was still on the tier when Guaje had hopped into the pool below. “Wait!”

The upper pool was pretty shallow, so Guaje could sit up and only have water up to his breast. His ears were back and his tail was thumping hard enough so that it occasionally broke the surface, sending showers of drops into the air. “David, thanks for checking on me, but really. You could’ve just asked me. You didn’t have to make up some story about—”

Guaje’s eyes suddenly widened, and his jaw dropped as his ears shot up. He twitched back, then was looking about to leap with David, his hackles rising, turned around to look behind himself.

The water coming out of the top of the spout had turned grey and bumpy, and as it cascaded down towards David, he could see that the grey was actually a lot of little bodies. So many so close together that it looked like water, but it was really a lot of—pain stung in David’s right paw. He jerked it up and a little rat with malevolent red eyes was dangling from it. Revolted, David smacked it hard against the stone of the fountain, but just as it flew off, he felt another bite on his tail, and then two on his left hindleg, and he looked down and all the water around him was grey. And it was thickening and rising into a furry back, and oh, it was just as bad as the elders had said—

“David! Jump, damn it!”

David tried. He really did, but the rats hanging onto him threw off his balance and his paw clipped the edge of the tier as he went over. The water broke his fall, but then he kept crashing through it till his left hindleg hit something hard and that _hurt_ and suddenly the world was all hazy with black spots.

Suddenly it wasn’t hazy, but it was moving really quickly and David couldn’t keep up. His leg was on fire and he bit his lip but just bit through that and—“Guaje, wait, it _hurts_ \--”

“Can’t. Damn it, what did—you said they were swarming? Fuck.” Guaje had rammed his head against David’s side and was shoving them through the water. He stopped when they’d reached the rim, then leaped over David onto that.

Then he disappeared. David accidentally gulped water, then spat it out. He looked back and that huge rat-demon had reformed itself. It bared its teeth at him and he instinctively pushed his legs down—and nearly fainted from the pain. Broken bone, David dazedly thought. But Guaje wasn’t around, at least.

“David!” No, Guaje was back, and smacking David’s head. Kind of hard. “What are you waiting for?”

“My leg hurts,” David said. “I think it’s broken.”

“Well, then merge. Come on—David! David! Concentrate!”

Wow. Those were really long fangs. Longer even than Zlatan’s. “What? Guaje, you’re supposed to go. I came to warn you.”

“I—fuck, David, just—”

And then David was suddenly a lot bigger, but the rat-demon somehow seemed even bigger yet. It snapped at the air, then lunged and David reflexively flailed backward—his hand hit the rim, then pushed at it hard enough to send him tumbling over onto the ground. But his leg got jarred, and the pain was even worse in human form. Then—yanked forward, and forward, and he was moving, even though he was really sure he wasn’t actually doing anything.

“David, you need to try. Try, all right? I can’t fight like this, but I can’t carry you as a fox. David.” Guaje’s voice was all jagged and broken-up, coming in fragments that didn’t match the pounding of his feet. “ _David_.”

Broken leg. Right. But—David couldn’t move. He was really trying, telling himself he was a demon and demons could take pain, he was a demon and he’d broken bones before. Telling himself Guaje needed him for once and he had to do this, but…his muscles wouldn’t move. And he was still cold, though they were out of the water, and now also he felt sort of tingly, in a bad way. “Guaje…it…they bit me. Feels…weird…”

“Oh, _fuck_. That. Oh, fuck, fuck, _fuck_.”

Thump. Something rough against David’s head…a tree trunk? He pressed himself harder against it, shivering, and then just levered up his head to see the rat-demon lumbering towards him. Then a black shadow seemed to zip right through it, ripping a huge hole in its wake. Which healed up, but at the same time the rat-demon seemed to get smaller. The shadow took another pass at it, and then a third that knocked half the rat-demon apart into little scurrying bodies that were coming…

The nearest one was smashed flat under a grungy sneaker, and then Guaje was kneeling before David, still looking furious. He started to say something, but then looked over his shoulder. At the same time, he jammed his hands beneath David’s arms and lifted up David, starting to drag them along again. “Damn it, the one time I could really use Raúl…”

David mostly heard ‘Raúl.’ “He wanted me to stay put. He said…and I should’ve gone home…but I didn’t think he’d find you fast enough. I’m sorry I bothered you.”

“Oh, for…like I care about that right now, David,” Guaje muttered. “Where is he? Is he looking for us? How close are the others?”

“Said…looking for you. But I wanted…I’m sorry, Guaje, but I wanted to warn you. I…know you didn’t want to talk to me…but it was important…thought you wouldn’t mind I’m not…Mori.”

Guaje stumbled, letting David’s leg hit the ground and David crumpled with a whimper. For a couple moments he couldn’t even remember who he was, but then gradually the hurt faded enough for him to figure out what was going on. Like he couldn’t walk, and he could hear the rat-demon’s—rat-demons’ squeaking—and Guaje was cursing and trying to haul him along anyway.

“Wait—I’m too slow—”

“Whatever, you’re still not getting eaten by that damn thing,” Guaje grunted. He heaved again, and then David seemed to fly through the air for ages before he suddenly flopped onto Guaje’s back. “I don’t—hate anybody—that much—much less—”

David had a feeling he was going to pass out. He knew that that was bad and that it was going to get Guaje even madder, but he couldn’t really feel anything about that so he definitely…definitely didn’t have the energy. He just kind of thought it was really fucking stupid of him. “I love you, Guaje. Even when you hate me.”

And then he passed out.

* * *

Luís skidded a bit as he came to a stop and had to throw up a hand to keep from smashing into the wall. “Cesc? Raúl—Christ!”

That was the biggest rat-demon Luís honestly had ever seen. It filled out nearly the whole pipe and its eyes alone were as big as a half-grown fox-demon. On the other hand, its size seemed to be a disadvantage in coordinating all the little demons that made it up, since it had been facing away from Luís and now still wasn’t completely turned around—which was rather nauseating, with the way its hindfeet were at more than ninety degrees to its fore-feet. Its lower parts were still shifting about, moving in large squirming chunks, and…Luís looked at his tennis racket, then at the rat-demon. Then he shook his head and took a step back.

Fortunately, he moved towards the wall, and so the gigantic wind that came blasting from behind him had to push him that extra bit towards the edge. If he hadn’t backed up, he would’ve fallen right into the sewage. As it was, Luís ungracefully flailed and cursed, and then was ridiculously relieved when the wind died down as abruptly as it’d come up.

He scrambled back from the edge, gasping for air and then regretting it as the stench of the place surged into his nose. Something scurried by his foot and Luís instinctively smashed his racket down on it, then jumped as the thing burst into flames. And almost tossed the racket out of reach, but at the last moment he remembered he was an experienced mage and he didn’t freak out over things like that. Especially when spontaneously combusting rat-demons was exactly what he’d wanted.

Well, except for the part where now, instead of one huge rat-demon, the whole place was crawling with hundreds of tiny ones, and all of them were zeroing in on Luís. Cursing again, Luís quickly spritzed the racket mesh with the holy mayonnaise—damn it, that would _not_ get out of his head now—and then did a three-sixty in three sweeping swings. Ash and burning flakes flew up all around him, but Luís could hear the squeaking and knew he couldn’t stop.

“Figo!” Oh, good, Cesc was still shouting. And he sounded annoyed, which meant he wasn’t injured. “Stop—watch it! We’re over here! You almost hit me!”

“Sorry! Didn’t see you!” Luís whacked a bunch of rat-demons into the sewage, then grimaced at the wave of burnt foul air that rose towards him. He hadn’t fully crisped all of them because he could hear them swimming away, but he wasn’t getting into the sewage. Not till he at least could see the broodmother. “Where have you been?”

“I—” Light flashed across Raúl’s startled face, which was just beyond Luís’ racket.

Raúl’s eyes widened. Luís thanked God he still had the upper-body reflexes, even if the knees ached, and just managed to divert that last swing away from Raúl. He let the follow-through go to the right and then back, then let his arm fall naturally to his side. Then he started to repeat his question, but a scuffle behind him interrupted Luís and instead he looked over his shoulder.

The flashlight beam jerked again, away from Zinedine’s oddly distorted face. It dropped to Luís’ feet, then slowly rose to Raúl’s waist. At that point, its outer edges just allowed Zinedine’s head to be seen: the hawk-demon was pressing at his mouth and looking vaguely chagrined. In a way Luís had long since learned to interpret.

“Ew, did you _eat_ one? Don’t they taste nasty to you?” Cesc’s voice drifted from above Luís’ ceiling. Then a furry weight dropped onto Luís’ shoulder, and when Luís reached up, Cesc dug his little claws into Luís’ shirt. He could be a bit of a bastard sometimes, for all his disarming cuteness.

“What else was I supposed to do with it?” Zinedine asked, tone a touch irritated. He straightened up from his slight hunch, rotating both shoulders. Something about those seemed to be bothering him and twice he started to raise his hand towards them, only to lower it as if reluctant to show a weakness in public.

Raúl let out a muffled groan, then a sigh. “Cesc, _we_ ate some. Leave him alone and—”

“Well, he could’ve at least not been so stupid and flapped them all over the place. That just made it worse, and we were already—mmph! Mmmph! Mmmph?” When Luís pulled Cesc down into the crook of his other arm, keeping his hand clamped tight over Cesc’s muzzle, Cesc stared up at him with huge, wounded, pleading eyes.

Which were not effective at all, and if Cesc even nipped Luís, he was going to toss the fuzzball into the sewer. Really. He had a limit to his patience and he was reaching it. “All right, rat-demon taste aside, I’d also like it if you didn’t blow up windstorms down here. They’re not that effective.”

“If you had kept swinging that racket, I could’ve blown enough sparks about to burn out this whole section,” Zinedine said.

“Before or after I also caught fire?” Luís waited a second, then tried to tell himself that sudden look of mortified comprehension was predictable. God, demons. “I’m _human_ , remember? Flammable? Whereas yes, you lot aren’t so much?”

Zinedine squeezed his eyes shut, then put up a hand. Then he pressed his fingers over his eyes. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Cesc stopped squirming, and when Luís belatedly checked, Raúl was staring at the hawk-demon as well. So all right, Luís wasn’t merely frustrated and this really was odd.

“I don’t actually see a lot of people,” Zinedine added, almost in a mutter. He pulled his hand down and cracked open his eyes to look at it, then gave himself a hard shake. Then he shuffled forward, movements a bit stiff; he wasn’t ducking his head, but he was carrying it so he didn’t quite have to look at Luís as he passed to Luís’ right. “Who aren’t trying to trap the fledglings, anyway. So where are we going now?”

Luís let go of Cesc’s muzzle, then let the fox-demon climb back up to his shoulder as he gave his racket a fresh coating of holiness. He pursed his lips, rethought what he was about to say, and then looked at Raúl. “So what was the yelling about?”

“Oh. I got cornered for a moment and Cesc got a little excited.” Raúl gave a little shrug, then rubbed tiredly at the side of his nose.

Cesc muttered direly in Luís’ ear, but it was all in demon language. Not that Luís needed to be capable of understanding that to realize Raúl was greatly understating matters. “You know, I would also like it if you didn’t run so far ahead. I can’t see in the dark either, neither can Zinedine, and if this is how hard it is to find one fox-demon, I’d really like to not have to find more.”

Zinedine had stopped a few meters beyond, his head turned like he was listening. He also glanced back, his expression once again emotionless, and when he saw that they weren’t moving he idly began examining some scratches on the wall. Apparently that moment of near humanity had been an isolated incident.

“I—I know, sorry, I just want to get this damn mess over with,” Raúl said, at first halting and then suddenly speaking in a growling rush. He jerked his head to the side, then down as he tugged at his hair. “But anyway, I went up to below the butcher’s shop and didn’t smell Villa anywhere, so you don’t have to go all the way. From here we can also go to the park without having to backtrack.”

The scratches on the wall weren’t that interesting, since now Zinedine was staring down the tunnel with his head cocked. The backs of his shoulders bulged, then smoothed out into the usual triangular bony planes as he repressed an instinct to flip his wings over something.

Luís was listening to Raúl, and genuinely torn between wanting to shake the fox-demon and wanting to push him up against the wall, grime and ridiculous self-sacrificing instinct and all. But he also was wondering if the angels were anywhere near as flappy; he justified the thought to himself as a sanity-preserving mechanism. “All right, park it is. How far is it and—”

“They’re coming back,” Zinedine abruptly said. He began to walk backward, not in any particular hurry but definitely focused on something. A couple of times he rubbed at his face; by the last time, he was level with Raúl and turned so that Luís could see that his eyes were golden again. Golden and glowing and also the air was tingling, as if an electric wire was somewhere nearby. “I can’t—it’s too dark, but—”

“Then how do you know?”

Raúl took care of glaring at Cesc. “They can see through solid things, even if they have problem with light…do you _ever_ pay attention at lessons?”

“Sometimes. When ‘Nando isn’t flirting with Sergio,” Cesc defensively mumbled.

“It’s really big,” Zinedine finished, sounding a little startled. And…normal about it. Not stiff. “How much of that mayonnaise do you have?”

Luís grimaced at the name, then shrugged and gave the can an assessing shake. “I wasn’t really planning on a pitched battle, just search-and-rescue.”

“Well, you can eat them,” Cesc sniped.

Zinedine put up a hand, stopping Raúl, and turned to look at Cesc. Cool and long, with slightly raised eyebrows, till Cesc began to bristle against Luís’ ear. “I’m not that hungry.” He looked down, then began to unbutton his cuffs and roll back his sleeves. “So I could fly ahead and see if your friend is where you think he is much faster than you could walk there, except for this problem with seeing in the dark. Because I really can’t, unfortunately.”

“Stop fighting with everyone. It doesn’t help with them being assholes, and it definitely doesn’t get David Silva back any sooner,” Luís snapped before Cesc could get in a word. He handed his racket and can over to Raúl, then pulled Cesc down and held him out at arm’s length.

To his credit, Cesc finally seemed to realize how stupid he was being: his ears and tail were drooping, and he only made a few half-hearted attempts to reply, which also sounded a lot more like apologies than like retorts. Then he let out a little depressed hiss. “Sorry, okay? I just…worry about David, because he gets so blind whenever Villa’s involved, and…and Figo? Why are you bouncing me? And looking at me like that? You’re scaring me.”

“You’re lighter than Raúl is.” Luís lowered Cesc and raised his eyebrows at Zinedine, who seemed to be catching on. “And you’re being very helpful all of a sudden.”

“I don’t have any grudge against any of you, and I can understand worrying about your own,” Zinedine said. He blinked once. “He’d probably be fine, if he can keep his balance.”

“What…oh, no. No, no, no, I don’t think so—” Cesc wilted under Raúl’s and Luís’ combined stares “—are you sure this’ll help David?”

Surprisingly enough, it was Zinedine who stepped forward. He handed the flashlight to Luís, then bent down so he was about level with Cesc’s head, looking solemn. “If he’s there, I promise to get you to him.”

Cesc tried to curl up, his dangling hindlegs feebly twitching. His face screwed up, eyes squeezing shut, and then he went slack. “Okay. But if you drop me, I’m gonna kill you. My kin are gonna kill you. Figo’s gonna—um, Figo?”

“I’ll hurt him for you,” Luís promised. Then he shrugged at the look Zinedine gave him, because what else did the hawk-demon think Luís was going to say to that? No, Luís was just going to let it go?

After another second, Zinedine stepped back to get some space. He swung his arms forward once, then back—and they were wings, so long that the leading feathers nearly brushed Luís’ head. He shrank, his legs seeming to retract into his body, till he was basically an oversized hawk. His wings looked slightly off till Luís recalled some late-night nature special and realized Zinedine had to alter the shape when he didn’t have any updrafts to lift him. As it was, he was beating his wings pretty quickly.

Luís started to try and judge the situation, but then gave up and just tossed Cesc. The fox-demon shrieked and threw out all four legs, but Zinedine slid beneath him with perfect timing. And anyway, Cesc immediately melted into…the shadows over Zinedine’s back or something like that; Luís didn’t have time to see before Zinedine swooped off down the sewer.

“You really think he’ll do it?” When Luís looked over, Raúl had his fist up against his mouth and was chewing nervously on a knuckle, all the awful possible scenarios clearly running through his head. He started at Luís’ touch, then stared as Luís pulled him over by the waist. “Luís—”

Raúl’s knuckle came up at the last moment, but if nothing else, Luís was good at circumventing unexpected obstacles. He kissed the knuckle, then eased his mouth around it so Raúl’s sharply-drawn breath whisked by his lips. Luís followed it to Raúl’s mouth, and then solidly kissed that. “He’s been in my house and I have his trace if I need to track him down and kill him. And Cesc’s too twitchy to realize it now, but eventually he should notice that Zinedine letting him onto his back is letting him have easy access to the quickest way to kill Zinedine.”

“He hunts enough pigeons,” Raúl said after a moment, a hint of a smile on his face. His hands pressed up Luís’ back, then clenched a little too tightly. His mouth straightened a moment before he abruptly leaned forward, resting his forehead against the side of Luís’ jaw. “Luís, I’m not handling this well. I should’ve—should’ve said something about Villa earlier, to Mori or—and should’ve just gotten Silva before he heard Villa was still out, and if either of them are hurt I’m—I’m—”

Luís tugged at Raúl’s hair, and when that wasn’t enough, slid his hands under Raúl’s jaw and firmly shoved up the fox-demon’s chin. Raúl made a startled noise, his furry ears suddenly popping out, but for once Luís ignored that in favor of soundly kissing the demon. Yes, they were in a sewer and there were God knew how many rat-demons coming their way, and Luís didn’t have the slightest idea if everyone was going to be okay when it was done. But he did know he was trying his damnedest, and neither he nor Raúl would’ve let Cesc go no matter how bad things were if they thought he was going to be in worse danger, and—“Raúl. You’re a good leader. You’re not God. If you were, the others wouldn’t be so stupid but they’d also be self-righteous angels, and you’d probably still be miserable.”

“I’m not—” Then Raúl snorted, and then laughed ruefully beneath his breath. His fingers kneaded at Luís’ back. He lifted his head, dropped it, and then lifted it again as if to speak, but instead kissed Luís, his mouth soft and sweet. “Thank you.”

“Any time,” Luís said, reluctantly letting go of him. Unfortunately, they would be in a life-threatening situation, and…and Luís frowned, squinting at Raúl’s empty hands. Which he could still see, because light was coming from somewhere. “Wait, what did you do with the flashlight? And the racket, and the…”

Raúl blinked, then sheepishly reached behind himself. Something rustled and the tip of a bushy tail waved from behind him a few times, and then Raúl produced the flashlight, racket, can, and…and the racket he’d taken along, too. From…

…occasionally there were things that Luís knew he was better off not knowing about, and he got the clear sense that this was one of them. So he just took his racket, gave it a fresh spray of holy mayonnaise, and then stuck the flashlight under one arm. “Don’t even try to explain. Just tell me what that scratching noise is.”

“Rat-demons,” Raúl said. He grimaced. “I can smell them now…Zinedine’s right, they’re coming this way, but I don’t think…I think the main part is trying to get somewhere else. We can probably stay here and not get swamped.”

Luís nodded, scanning the surrounding area. He tried to commit as much of it to memory as he could, on the off-chance that he lost the flashlight or the thing broke, or something like that.

“Luís? You…don’t really hate Zinedine, do you?” Head tilted, Raúl watched through Luís’ flinch and then bad cover-up, and then till he was nearly smirking. “If I met him on the street, I think I’d have to take a second look.”

“Well, looking is different from…oh, you know I hate it when you do that,” Luís muttered. He scuffed his shoe a couple of times against the concrete. “Fine, well, I still don’t think I’m seeing everything, but he could be less annoying. And if he was, I might be willing to try a coffee and figure out what’s really going on here. But as it is…”

Raúl moved the shoulder nearest to Luís, fiddling with his racket. He took a couple experimental swings, then abruptly stepped out and smashed something that briefly flared up. “I just…I just want you to know, I’ll try and accommodate your affianced. I don’t actually mind the idea of you having another one, because I know it won’t change things with us, but I’m a little…he annoys me too, and if your affianced is anything like him…”

“Thanks.” Luís reached out and was going to give Raúl’s ears a stroke or two, but just then the hair on the back of his neck prickled. So he swung around instead and smacked a couple rat-demons who were just climbing out of the sewage. “Well, we’ll see about that when we get to it. In the meantime…you know, I really wish I had reception down here. I want to know if Zlatan’s anywhere near finding the broodmother, or if he’s hung up somewhere.”

* * *

“I wanted to come,” Paolo weakly reminded himself.

The shower of guts and fur momentarily paused. “Yeah, and you’re not even helping.”

“Because you’re not leaving any for us.” Sandro recrossed his arms over his chest, his sword irritably swinging from one hand. “Paolo? How much mouthwash do we have at home?”

“A bottle and a half.”

“We need more.”

The slaughter started up again, even though by now it was fairly clear that the rat-demon was not only unable to pull itself together into a coherent shape quickly enough to counterattack, but that it was also…actually, it’d just broken apart into its component rat-demons, which were all fleeing. Zlatan pumped his fists in the air, then gleefully leaped after them, fireballs trailing from his fingertips.

“The broodmother is the other way,” Sandro muttered into one hand.

Paolo cleared his throat. “Zlatan? _Zlatan_. Zlatan!”

When Zlatan stopped, he skidded on so much gore that he smacked into the far wall. Grumbling to himself, he rolled onto his feet, then gave his filthy clothes a disgusted look. Then he got up and stared down the corridor, his annoyance palpable. “What.”

Sandro didn’t take his hand off his face, but only rotated it to point. “Other way.”

“Oh.” Zlatan absently flicked dangling bits of…things…off his hands as he started off where Sandro had indicated. He sniffed the air, then nodded. Then _grinned_ , and he had red flecks in his teeth as well. “Oh, I am _so_ looking forward to this. Fucking little shits with their squeaking and their goddamn inconvenient timing and…”

Well, he was a demon, Paolo told himself. And given the provocation, the glee was understandable, if somewhat inappropriate. And…and…possibly the responsible, caring thing to do wasn’t to go with Zlatan on every save-the-city trip he took, after all. Possibly it’d be better to stay back and make sure he had a good meal—no, he probably wouldn’t be hungry, and Paolo wasn’t going to think further on that. All right, then a hot bath and clean clothes ready and waiting.

“We need more soap, too,” Sandro muttered.

“I know,” Paolo sighed, and reluctantly followed Zlatan. “I know, Sandro.”

* * *

David woke up but it took him a while to realize he’d woken up, since it was just as dark as when he had his eyes closed. But he didn’t think he’d hurt so much if he were asleep, and also…“Guaje?”

Whose face swam into view, all furrowed brow and glittering eyes. His ears were flattened so far back against his head that at first David didn’t think they were out. “Shhh.”

That was weird. And David almost asked ‘why,’ but then something clanged nearby and he froze without thinking about it. At the same time Guaje whipped about and backed up, till he was crouching right over David. His tail got stuck between David’s back and the wall, and David tried to reach to get it free, but he could barely lift his hand off the…concrete? Smelly concrete. “Sewers?”

“ _Shhhh._ ” Guaje dropped his head so he was glowering at David through his stiff arms, and even upside-down that made David cringe.

Which made him move his broken leg without thinking about it and he couldn’t help whimpering. He tried to stifle it immediately afterward, shooting a sorry look at Guaje, who…was grimacing? Was he hurt, too? Had the rat-demons caught up with them again, because David had slowed them down?

A strong whiff of rat-demon suddenly blew by and both of them tensed up. David couldn’t hold it for more than a couple seconds, but Guaje stayed on guard for a good two minutes. And even when he had decided that nothing was coming, he stayed wary; he just moved his knee so he was crouched beside David instead of over him. He glanced all around them, including above them, and then he looked at David. “Can you feel your feet?”

“Feet? Um-- _sssss_.” David jerked into a half-curl, then immediately regretted that as that just jarred his leg even worse. Though he did manage to keep his whine inside this time.

Something touched his shoulder, then went away. Then it came back, and nudged till he managed to uncurl a little bit. He sucked in a breath, trying to relax, to pretend he wasn’t there, he was—something hit him on the cheek. Hard.

“Sorry,” Guaje said, withdrawing his hand. He wasn’t looking at David, even though that had to be the first time David had ever heard the demon apologize to…to _anybody_. Even Mori just got a grudging hunch of the shoulders. “But you need to stay awake.”

“What…what is it? When…they bit me?” David mumbled. He tried to pull up his hand again and got it to move a couple centimeters before he ran out of energy. So he rested a bit, figuring this would probably keep him occupied well enough, and then willed his hand up a little more before suddenly it got pinned. Blinking, David stared up at Guaje. “My cheek still hurts.”

Guaje winced, then touched David’s cheek, and even through the numbness, David could feel that spot tingle—in a good way. But then Guaje moved back, turning around, and the next that David felt, Guaje was examining his leg, so the other demon had probably just been doing the same to his cheek. Which was disappointing, but…well, Guaje was touching him. That was new.

“Rat-demons have poison. Normally it wouldn’t bother a fox-demon that much, but you’re still a little young. Listen, David, I need to see—”

“Okay,” David agreed, yawning. Then he bit his lip hard, and the spark of pain was just about enough to wake him up again.

He wasn’t sure what Guaje had done, since it seemed like Guaje had already done it—had David drifted off for that long?—and had moved on to prodding gently at David’s foot. And huh, David didn’t have his shoes on anymore.

It took him way too long to figure out what was wrong with that, and then when he did, he tried to grab Guaje and just rolled over instead. This time David had to scream, it hurt so bad, and he knew that that wasn’t a good idea but he’d never, _ever_ hurt this much before. Never. Was it really just a broken leg? It felt like the limb had been ripped off.

“David! No, lie still—” Guaje’s hands turned back David’s hips, then pressed down there and at David’s sides. Then Guaje turned, looking down the sewer towards a scrabbling sound that was getting steadily louder. His lips flattened out and his hands clamped down till David was hurting, but David kept quiet. “Fuck.”

“Why…are my shoes off?” David asked. Though he knew the answer, and also knew what that scrabbling was. “Guaje. Shouldn’t…moving?”

The other demon relaxed his fingers a little, then absently moved one up and down David’s side, which felt kind of nice. “We can’t move anymore. I can’t keep dropping you to fight—it’s making you get worse that much faster. David, don’t fall asleep, all right? I’ll figure out something.”

“You’re lying,” David said. And Guaje’s expression when he glanced at David was so funny, David couldn’t help snickering. He wasn’t nearly as cranky as everybody thought he was, really. Not once you really got to know him. “Oh, you suck at lying, Guaje. You really do, but it’s cute. I like it.”

“I’m not—” Guaje drew in a deep breath “—I am not lying to you. I’m going to get us out of this. You’ll be okay. You just need to stay awake.”

“I’m gonna. I mean…first time I get a decent talk…with you…in months? Not gonna fall asleep. Hey, we can…even talk about…Mori.”

Guaje’s brows jerked downwards, and his hand on David’s side abruptly pushed down. Then he snorted and looked away, back at the approaching rat-demons. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

“Suck at it. Come on, you punched Raúl.” Things were getting blurry again, though David was blinking like crazy, and rubbing his one eye against the ground to see if that helped. It didn’t, and the darkness just kept stretching and rippling, with one spot almost looking like a bird. In the sewers. Right. “It’s okay, you know. I mean, you can’t help who you love. And I want you to be happy. That’s…why I bug you. I just…want to…you know…help.”

It seemed a long time before Guaje answered, though David was pretty sure that that was just the poison in his blood. Man, he hated being young. This rat-demon stuff was really awful, and right when Guaje was finally talking to him. Which okay, probably wasn’t supposed to be what David was thinking the most about, but look, he was in love. He couldn’t help it either.

“I know, David. But I just…that was stupid. So stupid. I am an incredible idiot, I hope you know.” A little laugh leaked from Guaje, who took his hand off David and flexed it into claws. He looked at them, then began dragging them along the concrete to sharpen them. “Did you tell Raúl where you were going?”

“…no. I just went…I was worried. Didn’t know…you okay.” David’s eyes drifted shut and it was all he could do to force them back open. He strained to pick out something in the dark sewer, something that he could focus on. That bird thing. It looked a lot bigger, but it was weirdly lumpy on top. “Sorry.”

Guaje laughed again, but it wasn’t a really nice one. He dropped his head as well, till he was down on his elbow and his mouth was nearly touching David’s forehead. His breath fell on David’s face and David could smell that Guaje had eaten something after he’d left, something kind of spicy and meaty, like andouille. “Damn it, would you stop apologizing? You remind me of Raúl that way.”

“Is that…why you don’t…like me?” David asked. The inside of his mouth was drying out and he could barely talk now. He licked his lip, but then had trouble pulling in his tongue.

It seemed like Guaje was staring at him, but David couldn’t even get up the energy to roll his eyes over to see for sure. He did feel Guaje’s breath stop for a couple seconds, and then hear Guaje shake himself. Then Guaje started to say something, but—

“Incoming!”

…Cesc? There was a flutter overhead, and then something black fell from the ceiling.

“Gah! Ow, ow, ow…ow. Stupid bird…David!” Pattering feet, and then a wet nose prodded at David’s cheek. “Are you okay—hey!”

“No, he’s not okay. Does he look okay, damn it?” Guaje snapped. His hands went back on David, sliding under David’s arms and then pulling him up so his head rested on Guaje’s shoulder. And the rest of Guaje was warm and softish, and Guaje didn’t snarl when David nestled back against him. “Where’s Raúl? Who—who the fuck is that?”

“You dropped me!”

“I can’t land properly with you on my back, and you seem all right. What’s wrong with him? Was he bitten?”

“What do you think, you asshole? Cesc, where is Raúl? There’s a lot of rat-demons headed this way, and David’s leg is broken, and—”

“—and you think he’s an asshole? Oh, man, if David isn’t okay I’m never speaking to you again. He went off because he was so worried about you, and now—”

It all blended together into a confusing muddle, and after the first couple seconds, David didn’t even try to keep track of who was talking, much less figure out what was going on. Though he did want to say he didn’t really hurt that much now, and actually, he thought he was going to be okay. If Guaje would just get moving, and stop worrying so much about him.

“I _know_ , Cesc. But David needs a damn healer, so can we sort this out later? Who’s he? Did he _fly_ you over here?”

“I think can carry two of you, but not all three.”

“Well, fine.”

That last one, though—that was Guaje. And David had heard the bit about two and not three, though he wasn’t sure who’d said it. Then it all blurred together again, but David could feel himself being moved. He got rolled over, somebody holding his leg even though he couldn’t feel a thing in that now, and he kind of got the idea. Which was stupid, because whatever ‘carry’ meant, it wasn’t going to work with him. He was too tired to go to fox-form, and maybe he was small, but he was pretty sure that nobody could carry two of him. They had to mean two fox bodies, and there was Cesc and Guaje.

Cesc’s voice somehow penetrated David’s haze: it’d gotten a little higher and raspier, so he was a fox now. Guaje was still human, his hands steadying David right by the water, but he was going to change into a fox in a moment. They weren’t like Zlatan, who didn’t need to change all the way to fight; they had to shift to do anything really serious.

And yeah, that was Guaje’s tail dragging past David’s arm. David thought that, if there was ever a damn time he had to _move_ \--he lunged, grabbed that tail, and then twisted to toss Guaje over him. He figured if he missed whatever the carrying thing was, at least Guaje would end up in the sewage flow. Which would be really smelly and gross, but it’d get Guaje out of the way.

It’d better, David thought as he collapsed, because now he really couldn’t move. Not even to open his eyes, which had fallen shut before he’d finished throwing Guaje, and he knew that that was a bad thing. He just was so very, very tired.

* * *

Zinedine swerved wildly and nearly smashed into an overhead…metal thing…but he managed to keep Villa and Cesc clear of the sewage below. He also got turned around in the wrong direction, but he’d better figure that out himself because Cesc was way too busy trying to knock out Villa. “Stop it! Stop it! We’re gonna fall!”

“You fucking—I don’t care! Go back! That fucking moron, I’m going to—” Villa wrapped up with a snarl and a whip-about that saw his teeth sinking into Cesc’s forepaw. He’d _bitten_ Cesc.

Oh, the _bastard_. He so didn’t deserve David Silva. “You asshole! He’s not a moron! You are! Stop hitting Zinedine! He’s gonna fall and then he can’t go back!”

Some weird noise came from Zinedine, just barely warning Cesc before Zinedine swooped again, turning sharply to tilt Villa back onto him when the other fox-demon had been on the verge of tipping off. Waste of effort, Cesc was frankly thinking, and tribal loyalties be damned.

Then Zinedine dove and Cesc just buried his head in the hawk’s back feathers. He cringed when he felt a bump, held his breath till he couldn’t anymore, and then looked up…to find that they had landed again, right by David Silva. Who really didn’t look good.

Villa had already bounded off and was nosing frantically at David’s face, whining. Fat lot of good that was—Cesc yipped in panic as he tumbled off onto the ground, then twisted about just in time to see one, Zinedine standing up on two feet, rubbing at what had to be a sore shoulder, and two, the first rat-demons scrambling around the corner. Zinedine was looking at those two, and he grimaced when he met Cesc’s stare.

“Listen,” he started. Stopped, and then shook his head, a lot like Figo when Figo was about to do something really awesome to fix a really irritating problem. “Just hold onto something.”

Cesc stretched into human form, then hurried over to drag David Silva—and a still-bitey Villa, who could just put up with being squeezed—as closely to the wall as he could get. He hooked both legs around a pipe, clutched Silva and Villa tight, and then looked warily at Zinedine. “What?”

“It smells down here,” Zinedine muttered, tone resigned. His shoulders twitched and his wings snapped out, filling the whole place. Then they began to beat, and a strong breeze immediately sprang up.

The smell got even worse, but Zinedine was obviously just warming up; Cesc hunched over and shoved his nose into Villa’s back, ignoring the asshole’s protesting squawk. He heard a roaring and then the wind was literally ripping at him, making the pipe fittings creak and groan and burning his exposed skin so badly that he was surprised to see it wasn’t flaying right off. And it went on and on and on, till Cesc thought he couldn’t bear it and then longer, till he knew he couldn’t bear it. He couldn’t—

\--the wind abruptly died, and Cesc gasped, not realizing till then how difficult it’d been to breathe. He looked up at Zinedine, who wasn’t mussed at all, and then down the sewer: the rat-demons were gone, but their smell was already drifting back.

“All right, let’s try this again. Who am I carrying?” Zinedine asked.

“David,” Villa firmly said, wriggling free of Cesc’s grip. He rolled to his feet in human form, then dropped onto his knees again to gently shake David. “We can make him change back. You’ll be able to carry him.”

“If you do that, the poison’s gonna go through his system even faster, because he’ll be smaller—”

Villa surged forward, so suddenly that Cesc actually thought the other demon was going to hit him. Which didn’t happen, but only just, considering the way Villa’s eyes were burning. “I am _not leaving_ him. So—”

“So shut up and look after him.” Zinedine half-turned, then bent down to grab Cesc’s and Villa’s arms. “No, keep holding onto him. I’m going to try reversing it…just hold on.”

* * *

“Oh, _finally_ ,” Zlatan said, dropping to the edge of the outlet. Then he actually looked at the gigantic, sprawling, rotting nest below him and he just…fuck, he couldn’t believe he was sort of related to this crowd. “That’s the broodmother.”

She saw him. A grotesque mound of greenish-gray fur, heavily slimed where it wasn’t scarred, she heaved herself off her side. And as slowly as she moved, she couldn’t avoid, and didn’t seem to notice, that some of the little babies that had been hanging off the rows and rows of tits on her belly hadn’t quite made it out of the way in time. Her dull red, glowing eyes were fixed on Zlatan, who instinctively flexed his claws.

She pulled back her gnarled, spit-smeared lips to show jagged yellow teeth; her scabby black tail whipped back to strike the wall behind her so hard that the concrete cracked. The muscles in her haunches tensed.

And out of nowhere, a fucking wolf landed on her back. The thing was nearly as big as she was, and in fact Zlatan at first thought it was a hellhound. But its fur was longer and coarser, and more importantly, it had a sheen to it that hellhounds didn’t; it cared about its looks. Well, at some point it did—not right now, when it was tearing into the screaming, thrashing broodmother in a way that would’ve done Zlatan proud. If he hadn’t been really fucking pissed off, and what was even worse, he fucking recognized that wolf. “Morientes! That fucking bitch is mine!”

“What?” Paolo said behind him. “Mori? What’s he doing here?”

Down below, Morientes stopped to look up at Zlatan. His jaws were dripping with blood, but not so much that Zlatan couldn’t tell the jerk was grinning. He barked at Zlatan, and basically it translated to “first come, first served.”

“Oh—this is your fault! If you weren’t so obsessed with socks and belts—” Zlatan whipped around, screamed at the angels who looked back with confused expressions, and then threw up his hands. Then he spun back around to find Morientes laughing. That _fucker_.

Zlatan jumped down. Morientes stopped laughing. The broodmother abruptly heaved, knocking the wolf-demon off her back so he rolled and then came to a stop in a pile of shit so fresh it was still steaming. A lot smaller now, back to the usual nice-doggie size that he went around in, and looking pissed off as Zlatan zipped by to tear out the broodmother’s throat, killing her for good.

“Hah,” he gasped, stepping back. “You do _not_ sic your damn offspring on _my_ fucking nuisance in _my_ shower.”

“…‘his’? That sounded…possessive, didn’t it?”

“…nuisance? Excuse me? Zlatan, come back here and say that to my _sword_ \--”

* * *

“Oh,” Luís said as the rat-demons suddenly began to explode into little piles of dust. Then he blew out his nose as hard as he could, trying to get out the stinging bits of ash that had gotten up it. “Well, about time, Zlatan. Now—”

Luís wasn’t really sure what happened, but there was a whooshing sound and then Zinedine was standing in front of him and Raúl. Looking rather pale, but when Luís surprised himself by moving towards him, the demon shook his head and then stepped aside to reveal Cesc and David Villa. Who were hunched over, and Luís got that unpleasant lurch in his stomach before Raúl even gasped.

Then Raúl had yanked aside Villa, who looked both shocked and furious at that, and Luís got a quick glimpse of an unconscious David Silva before Raúl dropped his head. Cesc started to exclaim, but then fell silent. Then he got to his feet and came over to tug at Luís’ hand. “He got bitten by the rat-demons and his leg’s broken and Figo, can you do something?”

“Wait till Raúl’s done,” Luís said. Then he looked at Cesc again and sighed, lifting his arm; the fox-demon immediately ducked under it and tucked himself tightly to Luís as Luís patted his back. “Probably.”

Villa had settled off to the side, but he kept his hands on Silva’s head, steadying it while Raúl sealed his mouth over Silva’s. And Villa looked distinctly jealous about that, which was damn stupid since Raúl was the head of the tribe and the only one who could lend the tribe’s power to a member like that. Then again, that could be a good sign.

Raúl finally lifted his head, but just enough for him to look at Silva’s face. He absently wiped the back of his hand over his mouth as he stared intently at the slack eyelids, the still-parted lips. His brow furrowed, and then he stretched his fingers to lay their tips against Silva’s cheek; Villa hissed and Raúl glanced up, puzzled but also angry himself. And for once showing it, so Villa subsided.

A harsh rasp made them both look down again. David Silva’s lashes fluttered, then slowly rose and he stared blearily out from under them. Raúl sat back with a relieved sigh, and so quickly that they nearly banged heads, Villa dropped down to—Luís started forward, afraid the fox-demon had suffocated Silva just as he was coming round, but then he heard a soft, questioning noise from Silva.

Villa’s hands slid around Silva’s jaw, dropped to his throat, and then came back to frame his face as Villa continued to press their cheeks together. “You _idiot_. Don’t you ever do that again. I’ll kill you, you fucking moron. I can get out of my own damn shit. You don’t have to join me in it.”

“Guaje?” Silva wriggled slightly, then hissed in pain. “Oh, shit, my leg…Guaje, it’s okay. I’m…fine, see? You can go back to…thinking about…Mori.”

Luís considered the tennis racket in his hand as Raúl went stiff and expressionless, and Villa jerked up to stare at Silva. But then Villa snorted, his lip curling. “Who the _fuck_ is Mori? I don’t remember any Mori thinking he’d make better rat-food than I would.”

Cesc twitched, then twisted sharply around to stare drop-jawed. Raúl relaxed, and then even maybe began to grin, but then Villa began to tip purposefully forward and Raúl yanked him back by the shoulder. So Villa slapped off Raúl’s hand, and quick as lightning, Raúl snapped his fingers about to close on Villa’s wrist.

“You leave him alone till he’s stable. He’s still got the poison in him. I’m—” Raúl slightly accented the word “—just keeping him from feeling it right now.”

After a moment, Villa lowered his arm. When Raúl let go of his wrist, Villa immediately pulled it back and then put his hand on Silva’s head again. “Fine. Then get the fucking shit out of him already, would you?”

Raúl’s lip twitched, but he just turned to start ripping up Silva’s jeans-leg, preparing it for a splint. Speaking of which, Luís pivoted about to retrieve the crowbar, but then frowned. He looked around, and then went a few steps and looked again, but…Zinedine was gone.

“Luís?”

And just when Luís had been beginning to like him. But never mind. There was enough to do here.

* * *

“I can’t believe you, Mori. All these years and you’re still the biggest…” But then Raúl dropped back into the chair, his arms falling limply to either side. He stared at the pleading, desperate, freshly- and _thoroughly_ -scrubbed Mori sitting in front of him, then looked off to the side as he sighed. “I can’t do this. I’m…Silva’s fine, but he’ll be in bed for a good month, I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck, and Mori, you still seriously think that the best way to apologize is to _kill something_ for me?”

Mori ducked his head. “…it worked that other time. You know, with the…and the sex in the…”

“I didn’t know where you were! You went off and I was already worrying about Villa—”

“—look, Raúl, you didn’t seem to want me around right then, and I would’ve been completely useless staying here…I thought I could at least help by taking care of the swarm. And—I just wanted you to know—it’s still you. I’m not interested in anyone else.” Now Mori raised his head, and if his tail had been out, it would’ve been pathetically drooping. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Raúl muttered. He flopped his hands up onto the chair-arms, paused, then heaved himself forward. “No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lost my temper, and anyway I already knew—”

And they were making out. Raúl still looked like he was going to pass out in a moment, but Mori wasn’t so tired that he couldn’t take care of that. So satisfied with that situation, Luís wandered back into the kitchen, where he found Zlatan alternating between spitting mouthwash into the sink and talking on the phone to…

“…no, they’re fine, everybody’s fine, we killed the evil mother of rat-demons, turns out Sandro dumped something I made to kill the ghouls last week down the drain and it turned into a rat-demon summoning spell in the sewers but it’s all good.” Gargle-spit. “I mean, Sandro’s even sulking on Figo’s couch. That’s how fine things are.” Swish, swish, spit. “Yeah, I know Sandro doesn’t really like the fox-demons…I don’t either…damn it, it’s so annoying when he agrees with me…oh. Oh, well, look, Gila, I can hear Raúl tonguing somebody, and I saw Villa licking at Silva’s ears earlier, okay? They’re good. Go to bed. I can hear Gigi grumbling. OkayI’lltellPaolobye.”

Zlatan rolled his eyes as he started to put the phone down, but then he saw Luís and handed the phone to him. Then he was clearly about to begin complaining, but with perfect timing, Paolo strolled in and casually put his hand on Zlatan’s arm. “How is it?” he asked.

Rolling his eyes again, Zlatan opened his mouth. Paolo somehow made leaning up to take a delicate sniff look dignified before he slowly nodded.

“I think it’s—”

More kissing. Luís walked by them, put the phone in its proper cradle, and then walked back. He found a spot on Zlatan’s back that Paolo wasn’t clutching and used it to shove the two into the next room, which promptly provoked a squawk from the couch. Which would take care of that, so Luís dusted off his hands and headed for his shower.

The doorbell rang.

Luís stopped. Considered murder. Then remembered he was a decent human being, screwed up the last of his patience, and grudgingly headed downstairs. It was only a little past dawn and he was expecting a few deliveries, so possibly that was it. Or it was something he could kill—

He swung open the door, holding onto one side, and then stared at Zinedine standing on his stoop. The hawk-demon had gotten a new shirt, which was still a white buttondown but which was slightly dressier and paired with tan trousers instead of jeans. And he was wearing a nice tan sports-jacket, too. Under his right arm he had a book, and dangling from his left hand was a cardboard box.

“I’m Zinedine, but in that genealogy they list me as ‘Zizou.’ Which is my nickname.” Zinedine awkwardly paused. “I’m actually your affianced. It—I just didn’t like the idea either, so I came hoping I could find something wrong and talk my tribe out of it. You…see, they’ve been trying to get me paired off for centuries, and finally they resorted to that stupid book-proposal idea.”

“Okay,” Luís finally said. There wasn’t much else he could.

“But I…like you. So I was wondering…if you’d like a coffee?” After a moment, Zinedine remembered what he was holding and roughly shoved the book at Luís. “This is a gift. To apologize for the deception.”

Luís took the gift. And absently glanced at the cover, then looked at it again, completely forgetting about the rant he’d been about to lose. He opened it and checked the title page and binding, then held the book up to his ear and listened to the sound as he quickly flipped a few pages. Then he took it down and looked at Zinedine with…well, he wasn’t going to blast the demon. Yet.

“And this is for the children,” Zinedine abruptly added, handing over the box. He fidgeted a little as Luís cautiously opened it to find…tiny stuffed balls of fur? “The…the fledglings like to play with them. I don’t know a lot about fox-demons, sorry, but I thought…”

Predictably enough, Luís could hear scurrying noises behind him. He plucked out a ball, then dropped it to the floor. And only had to wait about thirty seconds before Iker and two kits slinked out of the shadows. One kit sniffed at the ball, then batted at it, and the other one promptly chased it off into the corner, hotly followed by the outraged first kit. Iker looked a little miffed as he ran after them.

“Huh.” Luís folded up the box flaps, then set the box on top of the book. He looked at the little stack for a long moment, thinking. “I have to ask you something…was somebody writing your lines? Half the time you seem like you’re reading a script.”

Zinedine…pinked slightly in the cheeks before he dropped his head, rubbing at his nose. He grimaced as he nodded. “Well, like I said, I didn’t come thinking I’d find anything I respected, so…Patrick wrote some things to ask to find out about that, and then Ludo sneaked in some things if I did change my mind. I—if you meet them, you’ll understand about that.”

He pulled at his nose some more, glancing up once. Then he dropped his hand and raised his head, his stance and expression slowly stiffening as the personality retreated. And…God, but did Luís understand that.

“Do we have to have coffee now? It’s just I’m about to drop asleep on my feet,” Luís said.

“Oh,” Zinedine said. He blinked. “Right, you’re human. I need to learn about that.”

After a moment, Luís grinned. “You do, and I’d be happy to explain over—I’d rather take tea, actually. But if you want, you can come in and pass your gifts around to the kits while I take a nap.”

Zinedine hesitated, then slowly began to smile as he stepped over the threshold. “I’d like that, thank you.”


End file.
